Empowering the Heavenly Parent Holy Community
Coercive control, spiritual abuse, and trafficking law have each become vehicles for the reintroduction of models that courts and scholars rejected decades ago. The dissolution of the Unification Church in Japan, the prosecutions in Argentina,…
... A Minister of Justice should guarantee impartiality. He should not prejudge an ongoing investigation. Declaring that “strict punishment is inevitable” before a trial has taken place undermines the credibility of the justice system.
Apparently, collecting donations to help people in other countries is considered a serious crime, and the Japanese must be particularly helpless and gullible for the State to have to protect them—against their will—from the risk…
Under the guise of a "dissolution order," the state claims to preserve the inward, private right to believe. Yet, by locking the doors to places of worship and barring communities from public facilities, the reality…
The fact that the Tokyo District Court and High Court cited civil lawsuits from forty years ago as grounds for dissolution is an alarming precedent. If the judiciary yields to an abstract social problem created…
The Supreme Court had an opportunity to reaffirm constitutional protections and restore balance to a process marked by irregularities. Instead, it delivered a decision that confirms the path chosen by the government and the lower…
... distinguish between critical examination and mockery, and to remember that behind every religious controversy are real individuals whose identities, values, and sense of purpose are deeply connected to their faith. Whether one agrees with…
Criticizing the Family Federation is a matter of freedom. However, forcing believers to renounce their faith tramples on the constitutionally guaranteed freedom of religion and is absolutely unacceptable. The Family Federation must communicate to the…
... We respectfully urge the United Nations human rights bodies to remind the Japanese authorities of their obligations to protect freedom of religion or belief, freedom of peaceful assembly, and freedom of expression for all…
... school staff is instructed to take action even in the absence of any request from the child or any indication of problems in the child’s family life. They are instructed to look for signs…