Busan Could Teach Debian Project a Lesson on Comfort Women

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Aug 12, 2024

Debian as a project still refuses to tackle this issue (which it won't even openly acknowledge; someone in the current Debian Technical Committee even wrote or "joked" in his site that he'd code for "sexual favours")

Debian's annual event took place in South Korea, which very well understands women's rights and empowerment of women. Now that the event is over let's consider what Comfort Women were and what they did, based on the oligarch's record:

...comfort women, a euphemism for women who provided sexual services to Japanese Imperial Army troops during Japan’s militaristic period that ended with World War II and who generally lived under conditions of sexual slavery. Estimates of the number of women involved typically range up to 200,000, but the actual number may have been even higher. The great majority of them were from Korea (then a Japanese protectorate), though women from China, Taiwan, and other parts of Asia—including Japan and Dutch nationals in Indonesia—were also involved.

From 1932 until the end of the war in 1945, comfort women were held in brothels called “comfort stations” that were established to enhance the morale of Japanese soldiers and ostensibly to reduce random sexual assaults. Some of the women were lured by false promises of employment, falling victim to what amounted to a massive human trafficking scheme operated by the Japanese military. Many others were simply abducted and sent against their will to comfort stations, which existed in all Japanese-occupied areas, including China and Burma (Myanmar). Comfort stations were also maintained within Japan and Korea. The women typically lived in harsh conditions, where they were subjected to continual rapes and were beaten or murdered if they resisted.

The part which rhymes with Google's "diversity" programs and Debian is this: "Some of the women were lured by false promises of employment, falling victim to what amounted to a massive human trafficking scheme operated by the Japanese military."

Daniel Pocock has covered lots of examples of these "false promises of employment". He also named some of the repeat offenders/culprits. He deserves credit, not condemnation, for doing this. █