CANDABA, Philippines ¨C Nearly 80 years since they were abducted and raped by Japanese soldiers, a small group of elderly Filipino women hope their government will finally acknowledge their wartime ordeal by creating a compensation fund.
For the few remaining survivors, all in their late 80s or 90s, the reparations demand issued by a U.N. committee earlier this year is realistically their last hope following a series of disappointments in their long quest for justice.
¡°In our last moments alive, I hope we can still receive the reparations for what we suffered,¡± said survivor Maria Quilantang, 88, in Mapaniqui village, close to the Japanese barracks where the abuses involving about 100 women and girls took place in 1944.
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