A girl statue symbolizing the victims of Japan’s wartime sexual slavery, euphemistically called “comfort women,” has been erected in Italy for the first time, a local activist group said Sunday.

The statue, dubbed a Statue of Peace or comfort women statue, was disclosed to the public on Stintino Beach of the Sardinia island Saturday (local time), according to the Korean Council for Justice and Remembrance for the Issues of Military Sexual Slavery.

The Stintino statue was the second such girl statue installed on public land in Europe after the first one set up in Berlin, Germany, in 2020, the council said. It also marked the 14th statue erected overseas after the first one installed in Glendale, California, in 2013.

The statue’s location is on a beach about 200 meters from Stintino’s city hall, the group said, adding the area is visited by many tourists.

The council said it proposed the construction of the statue to the Italian city in December last year, and the mayor immediately welcomed the proposal.

The girl statue represents the need to promote universal human rights of women, Stintino Mayor Rita Vallebella was quoted by the council as saying at a ceremony to unveil the statue.

The statue symbolizes 200,000 Asian women, mostly Koreans, who were forcibly sent to front-line brothels to work as sex slaves for Japanese troops during World War II. The sexual slavery victims are one of the many thorny issues stemming from the 1910-45 period, when Korea was a Japanese colony.

Source: Yonhap News Agency