European Parliament OKs sex slave resolution

The European Parliament on Thursday approved by a majority a draft resolution urging Japan to formally apologize to women forced to work as sex slaves by the Japanese military in Asia before and during World War II, following similar motions adopted earlier this year in the Untied States, the Netherlands and Canada.
The parliament, in Strasbourg, France, discussed the motion on the former sex slaves euphemistically called "comfort women" in a plenary sitting Thursday afternoon before putting it to a vote later that day. The text says the Japanese government officially commissioned the acquisition of young women for the sole purpose of sexual servitude to its armed forces and calls it "one of the largest cases of human trafficking in the 20th century." It calls on Tokyo "formally to acknowledge, apologize, and accept historical and legal responsibility, in a clear and unequivocal manner, for its Imperial Armed Forces' coercion of young women into sexual slavery...from the 1930s until the end of World War II."