Victim of abduction and attempted forced de-conversion gives overview of Japanese onslaught on the Family Federation since Abe assassination
Prepared by Knut Holdhus
Here is The edited version of a presentation by Norishige Kondo (近藤徳茂), author and Deputy Director of the Legal Affairs Department of the Family Federation of Japan, on 13th June, the second day of the 2024 CESNUR Conference, during session 8 (plenary, chaired by Dr. Eileen Barker), which had the theme “The Unification Church and Japan: What Is Exactly Happening?” Kondo is a victim of kidnapping, forcible detention and attempted faith-breaking.
The 2024 CESNUR Conference was held from 12th to 15th June at the University of Bordeaux Montaigne in Bordeaux, France with the theme: “The Contribution of Minority Religions to Society”. The conference was co-organized by: Center for Studies on New Religions (CESNUR), Université Bordeaux Montaigne – CLIMAS (Cultures et littératures des mondes Anglophones), and International Society for the Study of New Religions (ISSNR).
I will talk about the Family Federation dissolution issue in Japan.
First, let’s look at the course of the dissolution case, the chronology of events after the Abe assassination incident on 8th July 2022.
The lawyers’ group National Network of Lawyers Against Spiritual Sales (NNLASS), which is hostile to the Unification Church, held a press conference and accused the Unification Church of being a “great evil”.
In August 2022 Prime Minister Fumio Kishida proclaimed without careful investigation, “The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) will cut the ties with the Unification Church.”
19th October 2022, Kishida changed the interpretation of the Religious Corporations Act (RCA) overnight so that the Unification Church could be dissolved.
On 13th October 2023, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) filed a lawsuit to the court requesting the dissolution of the Unification Church.
In a periodical named Consumer Law News, the July 2022 issue, Lawyer Hiroshi Yamaguchi, a core member of National Network of Lawyers Against Spiritual Sales (NNLASS), hostile towards the Unification Church, published an article and stated, “Consultation cases for claims against the Unification Church have decreased recently.”
However, after the Abe assassination, the same month that periodical was published, National Network of Lawyers Against Spiritual Sales (NNLASS), including Yamaguchi, accused the Unification Church and made it appear as if it still caused serious damages.
The media accused the Unification Church of being “anti-social”, claiming that it previously had lost torts. The media blamed lawmakers from the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) who had ties with the Unification Church.
And those media attacks caused hostility against the Unification Church. Extreme right-wing groups screamed through loudspeakers in front of the Unification Church headquarters, “Get out of Japan!”
Writing denouncing the movement was painted on the wall of a local church: “Cult out of Japan!”
Threatening letters were sent to the headquarters and local churches.
Finally, on 31st Aug. 2022, Prime Minister Kishida proclaimed, “The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) will cut ties with the Unification Church.”
However, most Unification Church believers work in regular companies, hospitals, banks, and even at the national and local government levels.
In order for LDP lawmakers to follow this direction, they would have to investigate the beliefs of everyone they contact, and if anyone is identified as a Family Federation believer, sever ties. This violates the Japanese Constitution.
Prime Minister Kishida then took extraordinary actions, one after the other, to support this outrageous proclamation.
In the end, he rushed to order the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) to file a lawsuit against the Family Federation, requesting its dissolution to the court.
I’d like to present a list of disputed points in the dissolution case. On a legal level, following the interpretation change by Prime Minister Kishida, MEXT claims civil torts are included in the concept of “violation of law” as one of the requirements of dissolution.
Based on this legal claim, MEXT claims that the Unification Church case constitutes a violation of law, quoting the following reasons:
- The Unification Church lost 22 tort cases. Later they revised the number of cases to 31.
- 257 people wrote testimonies against the Unification Church. Later 30 more persons were added.
- On a legal level, the Unification Church asserts that the legal claim of MEXT is contrary to precedent-setting rulings.
- In Unification Church cases torts were established by deviation of social norms. The level of illegality is very low.
- In order to include torts as requirement for dissolution, torts must be interpreted as “illegalities”, which is a very vague concept. Dissolving a religious corporation by such a vague concept is a violation of due process.
On a factual level, the Unification Church asserts the following:
- In the past, groups of believers taught the Unification Church doctrine to visitors by video lectures at their institutes. They tended to introduce the church name to the visitors after they had learned the doctrine, but before they decided to join the Unification Church.
- In civil cases this practice has been judged to be both lawful and unlawful.
- More than half of the ex-members who filed lawsuits against the Unification Church, or who wrote the testimonies against it, were victims of deprogramming.
- The courts basically issue judgments in accordance with apostates’ narratives.
“The Committee is concerned at reports of abductions and forced confinement of converts to new religious movements by members of their families in an effort to de-convert them (articles 2, 9, 18, 26).The State party should take effective measures to guarantee the right of every person not to be subject to coercion that would impair his or her freedom to have or to adopt a religion or belief.”
As for the deprogramming issue, in 2014, the UN Human Rights Committee issued a recommendation to the Japanese government to resolve the situation of deprogramming in Japan.
Originally, the government should have addressed this issue, but instead the Kishida administration now tries to dissolve the Unification Church using testimonies from deprogrammed apostates. This is an outrageous human rights violation.
I also am a victim of kidnapping, and there are some more victims here at this conference. I wish to explain the reason why the Unification Church has lost tort cases.
In Japan, judges tend to issue judgments in accordance with the narratives of apostates in tort cases based on the following reasons:
- In Japan, there are no studies about apostates, showing they are unreliable witnesses.
- In Japan, there is no custom of making large donations to religious organisations.
- Japanese people, including judges, generally don’t believe in God and God’s guidance. Therefore, judges think no one would make a large donation to a religion unless they were threatened by stories of bad karma or going to hell.
- In Japan, judges are afraid of being accused by the media that they support a “cult”.
As a result, the Unification Church has continuously lost civil cases.
Nowadays, the government only listens to apostates, and the same can be said applies to the courts.
Here are some testimonies about the unfair tendency of Japanese judgments.
Attorney Yoshiro Ito, hostile to the Unification Church, says in a written statement submitted to a court, “There is a judicial framework. If it’s a cult, it loses. […] Claims that would not be recognized in other cases are easily accepted if the adversary is labeled a ‘cult’.”
Former Supreme Court judge Hiroshi Segi (瀬木比呂志) says in his book, “Japanese judges tend to follow public opinion.”
I wish to explain the background of the present conflicts.
Originally, the Unification Church and its affiliated organization Victory over Communism (VOC) opposed communism and promoted the enactment of the Spy Prevention Act (SPA).
On the other hand, leftist groups such as the Japan Communist Party (JCP), major media outlets, and a network of lawyers opposed to the Unification Church, are supportive of left-wing ideology and oppose the SPA. At the same time, they are eager to cause a sensation by publicizing one-sided information about the Unification Church or Victory over Communism (VOC).
The major media strategy in Japan is peculiar. Their strategy is to create a narrative which makes a sensation. They then only report information that supports their narrative, but dismiss information which goes against it.
In this way, once the media creates a narrative, they perpetuate it without any opportunity for the supposedly “evil” opponents to recover their honour. The Unification Church has been a target of this strategy.
So far, the strategy of the camp opposed to the Unification Church has succeeded.
- Firstly, media spread excessive criticism against the Unification Church.
- Parents of Unification Church believers became worried and got involved in kidnapping their adult children. Deprogrammed apostates filed lawsuits against the Unification Church. The courts, deeply influenced by the media coverage, issue judgements in favour of the apostates.
- Based on such verdicts, the media reports the Unification Church as being anti-social. Because of this, the government decided to request the dissolution of the Unification Church, now called the Family Federation.
- Through the media, leftists became able to have authority over the government, including the courts.
Communists are on the offensive and manipulate the democratic societies. It is said that even in major democratic countries, universities are deeply influenced by communists.
Several leading American politicians are well aware of the battle large communist parties wage against the Unification Church. Mike Pompeo, the 70th United States secretary of state from 2018 to 2021, described it like this at an international religious freedom conference 31st January 2024, “If there is anything Unification Church undermines, it is indeed communism. We should see the Japan Communist Party’s attack for exactly what it is, an attempt to undermine and weaken the vital US-Japan alliance while encouraging better relations between Japan and the Chinese Communist Party.”
In a reader’s post in the Washington Times 11th November 2022, Newt Gingrich, author and senior American politician who was the 50th speaker of the House of Representatives 1995-1999, says, “The current attack on the Unification Church is an effort to undermine and weaken the Japanese-United States alliance and create an opening for a Chinese Communist-Japanese rapprochement.”
Dr. Katrina Lantos Swett, former chair of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, and currently President of the Lantos Foundation for Human Rights and Justice, commented at the International Religious Freedom Summit in Washington DC 31st January 2024, “We respect that Japan is a friend, but friends don’t let friends drive drunk. That’s what they’re starting to do.”
Unless religious people stand up against communist expansion, the democratic world will be ruled by them.
I sincerely wish your understanding and support.
Thank you for your attention.
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