WITHIN EVERY WOMAN

A day I will never forget!

On the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women I never experienced such anger and hate like I did that afternoon when I walked with the grandmothers from Korea passed the Right Wing Japanese Nationalist.

The energy was so tense as these young men tried to break through the officers get closer to the grandmothers.

I can’t speak for Halmoni Gil as she was dressed in her traditional Korean Attire bundled up from the cold air after an exhausting flight from the night before and just recovering from her previous travel to Toronto,Canada. She walked silently across the angry mob with her head tilted down with a mournful facial expression.

They screamed out loud in Japanese ” Go home you Korean Slut”

I thought at that moment as I was fighting back tears.. WHY THE HELL DOES SHE HAVE TO GO THROUGH THIS….

How can human beings be so cruel.

Halmoni Gil walked in front of the other grandmothers who were in wheel chairs rolling into the Japanese Parliament.

Can you picture this? Its hard to believe that after everything they have gone through they have to still endure such pain.

That afternoon at the Parliament 300 people gathered inside to hear the voices of the grandmothers and the supporters talk as they tried to deliver over 600,000 signatures to the Japanese government. ( apparently there is a procedure… the government can easily reject the signatures, so we waited to see what would happen)

They had hoped to collect 1.2 million to represent the number of youths in Tokyo, Japan. But after speaking to Meeyhang the director of Korean Council. Getting those 600,000 signatures was extremely difficult as is… Often people don’t want to hear what the cause is even about.

3 hours later we got word that the government has accepted the signatures… Grandma Gil was the first to cheer out loud.

Don’t get me wrong I was happy they took the signatures, but really? I mean after 20 years of this battle to get an apology! DAMN RIGHT they should accept the signatures… to top it off one of the members of the new democratic government spoke and said this was a first step to take to reconcile this issue….

At that moment I imagined what all the activist and supporters thought… first step?

The day ended with a some what peaceful demonstration in front of the Japanese Parliament building… It was a site to see as the

Right wing nationalist had their own demonstration on the left side of the building with White Banners with Black and Red words such as ‘Liars’ and ‘Disgrace’ . And the grandmothers had their demonstration on the right side of the building with rainbow colored banners and butterfly cut outs with words such as ‘Justice’ and ‘Peace’.

Posted on Thursday, November 25th, 2010 at 7:22 am. Filed under: News RSS 2.0 feed.