A medical doctor was kidnapped and confined to “de-convert” him from the Unification Church.
Patricia Duval
Article 2 of 7. Read article 1, article 2, article 3, article 4, article 5, article 6, and article 7.
In a second case where a Habeas Corpus petition was filed, after the one discussed in my first article, a Unification Church follower, Hirohisa Koide, a 30-year-old medical doctor at Isshin Hospital in Tokyo, was abducted and confined for nearly two years.
On June 13, 1992, he was working as a doctor. He saw an average of thirty-five outpatients daily and was in charge of about fifteen inpatients. At around 8 p.m. that evening, he returned to his parents’ house in Warabi City at his mother’s request.
Nearly twenty relatives abruptly came in and made him sit in the back room, surrounding him. His father said, “Hirohisa! As your parents, siblings, and relatives, we cannot allow you to take part and work in a criminal organization called the Unification Church. Let’s discuss this frankly and carefully in another place we’ve prepared.” He was then confined and tentatively “deprogrammed” for about two years.
About a week after his confinement, a lawyer named Hiroshi Hirata, from the Lawyers’ Network, came to the confinement room, accompanied by deprogrammer Miyamura. Though the lawyer noticed a chain lock around the doorknob and the windows were tightly fixed, not to be opened—obviously, an illegal confinement situation—he reassured and encouraged his family to continue by stating that “this is not considered illegal.” Koide fell into desperation, realizing that the lawyer was involved.
Then, about two weeks later, late at night on July 12, he was woken up and told to move. On that day, the Tokyo High Court granted a Habeas Corpus petition submitted by the Isshin Hospital, and a summons was delivered to the apartment mailbox. Notified of this, the deprogrammers decided to change the place of confinement to ignore the court summons. They arranged his late-night transfer to another apartment in Niigata Prefecture. A year and a half later, when he feigned his disaffection to escape, his parents showed him the document.
In mid-October, he decided to act as if he had been converted, as he felt that talking with them was useless. He spoke and acted accordingly for the next four months, against his true feelings. He listened obediently to what the pastor, former members, and parents said. At the end of October, the deprogrammer came from Tokyo, and he nodded agreeably to everything he said.
The deprogrammer specified what he had to do: first, he was to write a statement to leave the Unification Church; then, there was a sheet for him to fill with the names of members he knew, the churches they belonged to, and their addresses—this was like a “loyalty test”; then he had to write a letter of resignation to the Church and to his hospital, which was sent out in January.
However, his conversion’s sincerity was to be tested, as the deprogrammers were chasing feigned withdrawals. So, he had to do media interviews and broadcasts for the next six months to criticize the Unification Church. Then, he had to go through a “rehabilitation” period at the Evangelical Church, the last step of the deprogramming or “rescue.”
In the evening of September 28, he was taken to Reverend Matsunaga’s (the deprogrammer’s) Evangelical Church. From that day on, he had to commute to this church from his confinement place for “rehabilitation.” Special “rehabilitation” homes and lodgings were prepared for those released from confinement who could not step outside. He could only move together with his parents.
In the church, each day at noon, a group of former members came and had lunch with Reverend Matsunaga. After a chat, they would decide on their schedule and roles for the day, looking at a list of confined members on the wall. The term “protective custody” was used rather than “confinement.” “Rehabilitation” included mandatory visits to confinement sites with them, to attend the indoctrination of captives against the Unification faith.
This means that he had to participate in the deprogramming of other confined members, i.e., visit them with other apostates and criticize the Unification Church, to prove that he was truly “rehabilitated.”
On October 23, his parents and he met with two attorneys from NNLSS, Hiroshi Yamaguchi and Masaki Kito, at the Law Office of an NNLSS lawyer. His deprogrammer had referred him to them to file a financial claim against the Unification Church to prove his apostasy.
He had no choice at the time but to submit the claim with the two NNLSS lawyers, but later, when he was no longer under coercion, he officially withdrew it.
In May 1994, he saw a chance to escape and fled. He then took the time to write a book on what had happened instead of returning straight to his work at the hospital, due to the risk of being abducted and confined again. His book, “Escape from Kidnappers,” was published on November 2, 1996, and protected him from being abducted and confined again.
Many of those abducted and confined were not so lucky and had no choice but to recant their faith for good and sue the Church for damages to prove their apostasy, as they would be under constant threat of a new confinement otherwise, regardless of their age.
So, NNLSS obviously knew about the illegal confinement of Church believers and actively supported it as part of the process of their forced de-conversion.
It was part of their stated strategy to obtain Church apostates, fabricate so-called “victims” from scratch, and have them eventually attack the Church.
Patricia Duval is an attorney and a member of the Paris Bar. She has a degree in public law from La Sorbonne University, and specializes in international human rights law. She has defended the rights of minorities of religion or belief in domestic and international fora, and before international institutions such as the European Court of Human Rights, the Council of Europe, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the European Union, and the United Nations. She has also published numerous scholarly articles on freedom of religion or belief.
