A Japanese court docket has ordered the dissolution of the controversial Unification Church linked to the 2022 assassination of former prime minister Shinzo Abe.
The church, formally referred to as the Household Federation for World Peace and Unification, has lengthy been accused by Japan’s authorities of coercive fundraising ways and cult-like behaviour, together with manipulative recruitment and illegal adoption practices.
The church stated it was contemplating a right away attraction of the order to revoke its authorized standing. It denounced the decision as “unfair” and stated the choice marked a significant shakeup for religions throughout Japan.
“Because the assassination of former prime minister Abe, there was numerous misinformation circulating within the media and social media about our organisation,” it stated in a press release.
“We sincerely ask that most of the people doesn’t discriminate in opposition to our congregation.”
The Tokyo District Courtroom’s order to revoke its standing will finish the Unification Church’s tax-exempt privilege in Japan and drive it to liquidate its property.
The church, popularly often known as “Moonies”, got here underneath renewed scrutiny after an investigation into Abe’s assassination.
The person who shot Abe at a marketing campaign rally on 8 July 2022 allegedly advised police his actions had been motivated by the previous prime minister’s hyperlinks to the church. He claimed that the church had bankrupted his household resulting from his mom’s extreme donations.
The assassination shocked Japan, a rustic with a number of the world’s strictest gun management legal guidelines and low charges of political violence.
Subsequent investigations discovered longstanding ties between the church and Japan’s governing Liberal Democratic Social gathering, which Abe led for years, triggering public outrage.
Abe appeared at occasions organised by church associates. In a video proven on a giant display on the assembly of Common Peace Federation, a church affiliate, Abe praised its work in direction of peace on the Korean peninsula and concentrate on household values. An emphasis on conventional, paternalistic household programs was one in every of Abe’s key positions.
In 2023, the Japanese schooling ministry requested the Tokyo court docket to dissolve the church, accusing it of attempting to steer its followers utilizing manipulative ways, making them purchase costly items and donating past their monetary means, and inflicting concern and hurt to them and their households.
After a yr and a half of hearings behind closed doorways, presiding choose Kenya Suzuki stated “the order was obligatory and inevitable” even when the court docket thought of the proper to freedom of faith.
“There have been damages on an unprecedentedly giant scale,” Mr Suzuki stated.
The ministry submitted almost 5,000 paperwork and items of proof to the court docket based mostly on interviews with over 170 folks.
The Unification Church was based in South Korea in 1954 by Solar Myung Moon. Moon claimed to have had a imaginative and prescient of Jesus as an adolescent, instructing him to finish his “unfinished work”.
The church’s core textual content, the Divine Precept, outlines its beliefs in God, human historical past and salvation.
Moon, who declared himself the Messiah in 1992, was convicted of tax evasion within the US in 1982 and served 13 months in jail.
Nonetheless, over time, he constructed relationships with conservative world leaders, together with US president Donald Trump and former presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush.
Moon additionally had ties to North Korea’s founder Kim Il Sung, the late grandfather of present ruler Kim Jong Un.
The Unification Church is the primary non secular group in Japan to face a revocation order underneath civil regulation. Two different teams have misplaced their standing beforehand however resulting from prison instances – Aum Shinrikyo, which carried out the Tokyo subway sarin assault, and Myokakuji, whose leaders had been convicted of fraud.
Further reporting by businesses.
