(Japan Today) A Japanese-Australian community leader said Thursday that he had filed a racial discrimination complaint against a Sydney church that he alleged intimidated Japanese nationals by erecting a memorial to women forced to work as sex slaves by Japan’s World War II army.
Tetsuhide Yamaoka, president of the Australia-Japan Community Network, said he had complained to the Australian Human Rights Commission about the prominent display of a statue of a so-called comfort woman from Korea in the grounds of the Uniting Church in suburban Ashfield.
Such statues around the world had become focal points of political, racist and often violent anti-Japanese demonstrations.
“We consider this is a huge intimidation to the Japanese nationals,” Yamaoka said in a statement from Tokyo.
