KUALA LUMPUR JOINT STATEMENT
A Common Initiative to Preserve the Historical Memory of the “Comfort Women”, Uphold the Dignity of Victims, and Advance State Responsibility
On 6 September 2026, the Conference on the History of the Nanyang Chinese Resistance and the Inaugural Assembly of the International Research Center on the History of the “Comfort Women” was held in Malaysia in a hybrid format. Historians, writers, community archivists, and civil society participants from Hong Kong, mainland China, Malaysia, Japan, Singapore, and other places, sharing a common commitment to historical truth, the dignity of victims, academic responsibility, and regional peace, issue the following statement:
We affirm that during Japan’s wars of aggression, military occupation, and colonial rule, women across Asia were subjected to organized recruitment, deception, coercion, confinement, transportation, and sexual violence. The system commonly referred to as the “comfort women” system was not a collection of isolated personal tragedies. It was a systematic abuse embedded in structures of war, military administration, and colonial domination. In Malaya and the wider Nanyang region, evidence remains dispersed across colonial archives, local newspapers, community records, family memories, and oral testimony. Many victims were unable to leave complete records because of shame, fear, ethnic pressure, and social silence. As the remaining survivors pass away, the rescue, verification, preservation, and responsible disclosure of historical materials has become an urgent duty.
We hereby announce the establishment of the International Research Center on the History of the “Comfort Women”. The Center will focus on the collection of historical materials, archival organization, oral history, transnational research, public education, and international advocacy. It will give priority to the digitization, cataloguing, and multilingual dissemination of materials concerning Malaya and Southeast Asia. The Center will adopt rules on the protection of survivors’ testimony, authorization, and graded access, and will respect the informed consent, privacy, safety, and right of withdrawal of victims and their families. Research, communication, or commemoration must never cause renewed harm.
We also formally launch the Center’s Chinese-English website. It will publish the Center’s mission, expert network, research plans, conference results, procedures for submitting historical materials, and the verified status of international initiatives. The website will serve as an entry point for transregional evidence and cooperation, and will publish verified scholarship, archival catalogues, oral-history guidance, and public education resources. No personal identity, account of sexual violence, or unpublished testimony may be disclosed without explicit authorization.
We call upon the Government of Japan to confront this history in a clear, sustained, and responsible manner: to fully acknowledge the organized and coercive nature of the military sexual slavery system and the responsibility of the state; to cease the denial, minimization, or glorification of aggression and wartime sexual violence; to open and systematically organize relevant governmental, military, police, diplomatic, and colonial archives; to support independent investigation and transnational scholarship; and to establish durable measures for history education, commemoration, an official apology, state compensation, and effective remedies for victims. Civil- society funds, ambiguous language, or one-off political arrangements must not be used as substitutes for state responsibility.
We call upon the Special Procedures and Complaint Procedure of the United Nations Human Rights Council, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women and other relevant treaty bodies, the Universal Periodic Review, the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights, the ASEAN Commission on the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Women and Children, and other international and regional mechanisms to continue examining historical denial, barriers to archives, injury to dignity, and the lack of effective remedies faced by victims and their families. Relevant states should be urged to preserve evidence, disclose facts, protect the rights to memory and information, and advance truth, justice, reparation, and guarantees of non-recurrence. The Center will submit factual summaries, evidence indexes, research reports, and advocacy materials through the official procedures of each mechanism and will accurately describe each procedural stage as preparation, submission, receipt confirmation, or follow-up.
We propose a long-term cooperation network among universities, archives, memorial institutions, civil-society organizations, women’s groups, trade unions, legal institutions, and media organizations in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, Japan, the Republic of Korea, and Southeast Asia. This network should jointly identify overlooked archives, sites, individuals, and oral-history leads. We attach particular importance to records left by Chinese communities during the three years and eight months of Japanese occupation in Malaya, while also recognizing the experiences of Malay, Indian, and other women. Historical research must not be confined to a single state or ethnic narrative.
We support systematic preservation and, where appropriate, joint nomination of documentary heritage, photographs, registers, maps, historic sites, oral histories, and transnational records through UNESCO’s Memory of the World Programme and other archival initiatives. Preservation does not replace accountability, but it helps prevent the loss of evidence, resist historical denial, and provide a reliable foundation for scholarship, education, legal assessment, and public commemoration.
We reject any attempt to transform the pursuit of institutional and state responsibility into hostility toward ordinary Japanese people today. Accountability is necessary to uphold the dignity of victims, prevent the erasure of history, promote institutional reflection, and educate future generations through facts. Genuine reconciliation cannot be built on forgetting, denial, or the silence of victims. It must rest on acknowledgment, responsibility, remedy, and non-recurrence.
We invite individuals and institutions holding relevant photographs, letters, diaries, newspapers, maps, registers, information on historic sites, and family memories to contact the Center. Until authorization and verification are complete, the Center will not disclose original materials, personal identities, or sensitive testimony. We welcome scholars, lawyers, translators, media professionals, and young volunteers to participate in archival work, international communication, legal research, and public education.
History must not be silenced. Victims must not be forgotten. Responsibility must not be obscured. Through rigorous research we will preserve truth; through transnational cooperation we will uphold dignity; through sustained action we will advance justice; and through these commitments we will contribute to a peaceful future for Asia and the world.
The Chinese and English texts are released together.