Prominent religious freedom leader Marco Respinti sounds the alarm about Japan at international conference in Tokyo
Tokyo, 3rd August 2024 – Published as an article in the Japanese newspaper Sekai Nippo. Republished with permission. Translated from Japanese. Original article
Marco Respinti, director of the religious freedom magazine Bitter Winter, calls the government’s request to dissolve the Family Federation an “abuse of power”.
by the editorial department of Sekai Nippo
Prepared by Knut Holdhus
The state cannot suppress religious freedom
Following the assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the government has requested the Tokyo District Court to issue a dissolution order against the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification (formerly the Unification Church). Believers are on the brink of losing essential church facilities and clergy necessary for worship and other religious activities.
On 22nd July 2024, the general meeting of the Japanese Committee for the International Coalition for Religious Freedom (ICRF) was held, chaired by Professor Emeritus Shoichi Ito, Kyushu University). The coalition defends freedom of religion and democracy. There, Marco Respinti, director of the Italian online religious freedom magazine Bitter Winter, which has primarily monitored religious persecution in China, gave a lecture and sounded the alarm about the situation in Japan. He said,
“Bitter Winter, the magazine dedicated to religious freedom and human rights, is a successful original enterprise that combines media people, activists, and scholars who are deeply committed to defending freedom of religion or belief (FoRB) for everyone, everywhere, always, and to denounce the persecution of believers.
Religious persecution or intolerance threatens believers all over the world, taking different shapes but always aiming at the same goal of curtailing or even denying religious liberty.
However religious liberty is not an accident that human beings and societies can do without. It is the pillar of any viable commonwealth, finds true democracy, and helps securing all different rights and protections to citizens.
Religious liberty is in fact the first political human right. It is the right to believe or not to believe in God, the Supreme Being, or any supernatural, overarching, and all-encompassing cosmic entity or force that rules the universe, and to live consequently. It is not sufficient to leave human beings alone to believe in the privacy of their houses. Believers should have the liberty to worship publicly and organize their personal and communal lives accordingly.
No power, state, church, or organization can curtail or deny that right.
Also, religious liberty is not relativism or pick-and-choose. It is the fundamental right of every human being to believe that an ultimate truth exists and to live by it.
Let us consider the case of Japan, where we are now. I come from Europe as an admirer of its lively culture and vibrant democracy. Tokyo, its capital city, is a marvelous blending of ancient and modern, house to millions of law-abiding citizens, and one of the most industrious centers of the world.
Yet, Japan it is also the place where a great abuse is being committed. I am referring to the case of the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification (formerly known as the Unification Church) and the order of its dissolution that the Japanese government is seeking before the Tokyo District Court.
Bitter Winter has followed the case closely and has been quite assertive in denouncing it as an absurd. All began with the assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (1954-2022), on 8th July 2022.
The Family Federation was in fact made somewhat responsible for it to the point of requesting its dissolution as a religious organization.
The assassin, Tetsuya Yamagami, said he was motivated by his intention to punish Abe for his collaboration with the Family Federation out of the hatred he felt for it when his mother went bankrupt in 2002, allegedly after her excessive donations to the group.
Many shadows remain on the case, including why the assassin waited for twenty years after his mother’s bankruptcy to kill Abe. But here we have an organization that is at the end of the day punished for a crime it never committed.
Abe paid a high price, the Family Federation is paying a high price, but the villain was solely the assassin. No one else but him should be made accountable for that heinous crime.
Instead, an old campaign was revamped by lawyers and others hostile to the Family Federation mostly for political reasons, as they resented for decades its successful sponsorship of anti-Communist initiatives. Other groups that had even less to do with the Abe assassination such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses are now also targeted.
All decent and democratic people should be worried of measures that are reminiscent of practices current in the People’s Republic of China and in the Russian Federation. Of course, Japanese authorities do not want to be associated with such rogue states. For this reason, they should redress their wrongdoings against the Family Federation and other religious minorities. This great country does not deserve this injustice.
No authority, state, church, or organization can suppress or deny freedom of religion. Japan should rectify this immediately.”
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Featured image above: Marco Respinti speaking in Tokyo 22nd July 2024. Respinti was born in Milan in 1964. He is a journalist, author and translator. He is a member of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), a Senior fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal, a founding member and advisory board member of the Center for European Renewal (CER), and Editor-in-Chief of International Family News (2018-2022). He is also Director-in-Charge of the academic publication The Journal of CESNUR (Center for the Study of New Religions) and the online religious freedom and human rights magazine Bitter Winter. Photo: David Chan / Sekai Nippo