A civic group in Germany plans to take legal action against German authorities’ orders to remove a statue in Berlin that commemorates victims of Japan's wartime sexual slavery.

According to sources in Germany on Sunday, Korea Verband will submit on Monday to the Administrative Court of Berlin an injunction that seeks to suspend the execution of such orders. 

Mitte District ordered the removal of the statue last Wednesday, just nine days after it was installed, after Japan raised issue with it and asked the German government to get rid of it.  

Mitte District wants the statue removed by this Wednesday and plans to forcibly eliminate it if it’s not done voluntarily.  

A campaign is currently under way in Germany, opposing the statue’s removal. As of Sunday afternoon, nearly one-thousand-770 people have signed the online petition supporting the cause.  

Kim So-yeon, the wife of former German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, said in a letter to the head of Mitte District posted on Facebook that she and her husband request the district to scrap its order for the statue removal.