Photo/Illutration Members of Flower Demonstration protest the “women lie” about sexual violence remark made by Mio Sugita, a Lower House member of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, at LDP headquarters in Tokyo’s Nagatacho district on Oct. 13. (Naoki Matsuyama)

The ruling Liberal Democratic Party refused to accept a petition with around 136,000 signatures demanding the resignation of Mio Sugita, a party lawmaker who said women can easily lie about sexual violence.

Organizers of Flower Demonstration, a movement calling for the eradication of sexual violence, and others collected the signatures online concerning Sugita’s Sept. 25 comment, the latest in a series of offensive statements by the Lower House member.

They are demanding that Sugita retract her remark, apologize and give up her Diet seat.

About 10 people, including Flower Demonstration organizers, visited LDP headquarters in Tokyo’s Nagatacho district on the morning of Oct. 13 to submit the signatures.

But a party representative would not accept the petition, saying they “did not make an appointment.”

The organizers said they went to the headquarters after trying and failing several times to arrange an appointment with LDP members, including Executive Acting Secretary-General Seiko Noda.

After being rebuffed in person, they said they plan to mail the signatures to Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga.

“We’re hearing that some people were driven to the depths of despair after learning about the remark made by Sugita,” said Minori Kitahara, an author who led the petition drive. “We want the LDP to listen to their voices.”

LDP Secretary-General Toshihiro Nikai said at a news conference on the morning of Oct. 13 that he will urge the party to reconsider its response to the issue.

“I will urge members of my party to deal with (the matter) more carefully, given the scale of the petition, which was signed by 136,000 people,” he said.

However, several other senior party members had already said they had no plan to do anything about Sugita.

Sugita was previously allowed to remain in the party and the Diet after offending, among others, sexual minorities and former “comfort women,” a euphemism for those forced to have sex with Japanese troops before and during World War II.

The latest outrage came after LDP lawmakers on Sept. 25 held a closed meeting, in which Sugita criticized plans to commission a private organization to run a program that would assist former comfort women.

“Women can lie as much as they want (about sexual violence),” she was quoted as saying by someone who attended the meeting.

Sugita, who has described the comfort women issue as a fabrication, initially denied making the remark.

But she later retracted that denial and offered an “apology” on her blog after Hakubun Shimomura, chairman of the LDP Policy Research Council, on Sept. 30 told her to explain the situation on her own again.

One LDP official said the issue was settled because Sugita had apologized.

However, her apology was not directed at victims of sexual violence but toward those who “got the impression from my comment that only women lie.”

Organizers of Flower Demonstration and others denounced Sugita’s “non-apology” and continued the online petition, which they started following the remark, to seek her removal from the Diet.

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