Stunning insight by an expert on international human rights law reveals the truth behind Japan’s state persecution of religious minorities the Family Federation at Washington DC Religious Freedom Summit
A speech Patricia Duval, French attorney and expert on international human rights law, gave at a special sponsored dinner on 5th February at the IRF Summit 2025 in Washington DC.
When I started defending the Japanese Unification Church [since 2015, called the Family Federation] some 12 years ago, I was told about the deprogramming of its believers that recurrently occurred in Japan. Numerous accounts were given of families abducting and confining their kin for months, sometimes for years, until they would recant their faith.
Some professional deprogrammers would step in during confinement to forcefully persuade the believers that the Unification Church’s beliefs were contrary to the Bible. This practice, which reminds us of heresy trials and persecutions, was done with tacit approval and refusal to intervene by the authorities, be it the police or judiciary.
Around 4,300 believers were subjected to deprogramming over 40 years in Japan.
After being requested by the United Nations Human Rights Committee in 2014 to put an end to this practice, Japan pursued its fight against the church in a reinvented form.
The fruits of deprogramming are now being harvested by state authorities through the accumulation of tort cases [civil court cases] initiated by deprogrammed members against the church to reach the final goal of its dissolution.
Who made all that happen? The Network of Lawyers Against Spiritual Sales is an association of far-left and atheistic activist lawyers with the stated purpose of eliminating the Unification Church due to its early stance against communism.
Those lawyers who were sometimes advising families to resort to deprogramming in the first place, incited the members – who finally recanted their faith – and their families to sue the church for damages.
With their reasoning based on consumer law, they persuaded the courts to consider religious donations as commercial matters and the soliciting of donations as “evangelical brainwashing”.
Following the shooting of Prime Minister Abe in July 2022 by a man who resented Abe’s sympathy for the church, scapegoating and hate speech flourished in the media.
Riding this wave, the government filed for dissolution of the church, alleging that it had caused “serious harm to public welfare” due to the various tort cases it had lost. In all these adverse tort rulings, the courts based their decisions on an alleged violation of social norms.
But what are social norms in the area of religious beliefs and practices in a country where materialistic and atheistic lobbies are at work?
Well, the social norms in Japan today include official guidelines issued for the protection of children and mention that making a child participate to religious activities is a form of child abuse.
Alerted by the Jehovah’s Witnesses, four UN Special Rapporteurs have issued an open letter to the Japanese authorities to express their concern about those guidelines.
Now, based on tort cases, the Japanese authorities fight for the dissolution of the church, accusing it of having seriously harmed public welfare. However, the UN Human Rights Committee has consistently urged Japan to stop using public welfare as a justification to limit freedom of religion or belief.
The government went further to enact a new law to criminalize the so-called “unjust solicitation of donations”. It sanctions the vague and arbitrary concept of “infringement of free will”.
This law has been announced as being specially designed for the Unification Church, but it could undoubtedly be applied against other targeted denominations in the future.
Now this situation needs urgent attention. Japan is a beautiful and liberal country, but it needs to be reminded of its commitment to respect freedom of religion or belief.
Thank you for your attention.
Featured image above: Patricia Duval speaking at the IRF Summit in Washington DC on 5th February 2025. Photo: Screenshot from live transmission