TOKYO, Japan: The Japanese department of the Unification Church has strongly condemned the Japanese authorities’s request to dissolve the group, viewing it as a grave risk to non secular freedom and human rights.
Japan’s Education Ministry sought a court docket order to revoke the church’s authorized standing following an investigation that alleged systematic manipulation of followers, monetary exploitation, and inflicting hurt to households.
The transfer adopted public outrage and scrutiny of the group’s fundraising and recruitment strategies after former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s assassination, through which the assailant cited the church’s affect. The church’s authorized affairs chief, Nobuo Okamura, known as the request “extremely disappointing and regrettable” and a critical infringement on spiritual freedom and human rights.
The court docket course of to dissolve the church’s standing might take months and even years, involving hearings and appeals. The Unification Church’s lawyer, Nobuya Fukumoto, criticized the federal government for failing to specify the violated legislation and pledged to vigorously contest the transfer in court docket.
Stripping the church of its authorized standing would outcome within the lack of tax exemptions, doubtlessly resulting in monetary difficulties. Concerns have been raised in regards to the church trying to hide its belongings earlier than a court docket resolution. The church has additionally expressed worries about injury to its status and reported harassment of followers and their households at work and faculty.
Revelations of longstanding connections between the Unification Church and Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party have eroded help for Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s authorities since Abe’s assassination. The church obtained authorized recognition as a non secular group within the Sixties.
While the church acknowledges previous points with extreme donations, it claims that reforms have been carried out for over a decade. Experts notice that Japanese followers have been requested to pay for ancestral sins throughout Japan’s colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula, and a lot of the church’s world funding originates from Japan.
Previously, solely the Aum Shinrikyo cult, liable for a lethal sarin gasoline assault on the Tokyo subway in 1995, and the Myokakuji group, whose leaders had been convicted of fraud, had their spiritual group standing revoked in Japan.