Delegates from east Asian nations accused Japan of committing gross distortions in history textbooks and refusing to compensate victims of Japan's war crimes during World War II.
In Tuesday's meeting of the 53rd session of the Subcommission on Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, Yun Byong-se, a minister at South Korea's mission to Geneva, demanded that Japan revise its middle school textbooks which gloss over Japan's war crimes during World War II and disregards the sexual exploitation of thousands of Asian women by the Japanese military.
North Korea said the sexual slavery during World War II was a crime against humanity which deprived the victimized females of their most basic rights and inflicted intolerable pain on them up to this very day.
China said Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's visit to the Yasukuni Shrine on Monday drew strong protest from Japan's Asian neighbors as the Japanese government has been evading the issue of compensation for the victims of its atrocities.
University of Tokyo professor and a member of the subcommittee, Yozo Yakota, strongly regretted that his country's government decided to approve the middle school textbooks which omitted facts about Japan's mobilization of Asian women as sex slaves for Japanese soldiers.
The subcommission, which opened on July 30 at the United Nations Office at Geneva (UNOG), will be closed on August 17.
It has been discussing the question of the violation of human rights and fundamental freedoms, including policies of racial discrimination and segregation, in all countries, with particular reference to colonial and other dependent countries and territories.