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Lane Evans dies: first US lawmaker raised comfort women issue

Lane Evans dies: first US lawmaker raised comfort women issue

Posted November. 08, 2014 07:33,   

한국어

Lane Evans, former U.S. Congressman (Democrat) who successfully initiated bid to have the House of Representatives adopt in 2007 a resolution against comfort women for the Japanese military, died Wednesday at a nursing home in his hometown of Illinois. He was 63.

After adding in 1999 for the first time to the U.S. House of Representatives’ minutes the issue of forced mobilization of comfort women for the Japanese military during World War II, Rep. From 2000, Evans continuously proposed the House to adopt a resolution. He arranged testimonial sessions in the U.S. Congress by victims of comfort women also known as sex slaves, and visited Korea in person in 2006.

Just before his retirement in 2006 due to progression of Parkinson’s disease, he proposed a draft bill of Resolution 759 on comfort women, and his long-time friend Republican Henry Hyde (died in 2007), chairman of the standing Diplomatic Committee, submitted the bill to the committee and had it approved. The bill had failed to pass the plenary session, but Congressman Michael Honda of the same party proposed Resolution 121 containing similar provisions, and had it passed by the standing committee and the plenary session.

Evans, a pro-Korean legislator, worked to protect human rights of separated families in South and North Korea and Korean Americans with mixed heritage, while serving as House representative for 24 years since election in 1982.