Under the new draft proposal, a “victim” is a “victim” even if she denies being one, if the anti-cult lawyers or the government says she has been victimized.
by Massimo Introvigne
On December 30, 2023, Law 89 of 2023 came into force in Japan. It has a long name, “Law on Special Provisions for the Operation of the Japan Legal Support Center for Prompt and Smooth Relief of Victims of Specific Wrongful Acts, and Similar, and Special Provisions of the Disposition and Management of Property by Religious Corporations.” It is part of the campaign conducted by the government against the Unification Church (now called the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification) after the assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in 2022 by a man who hated the church and wanted to punish the politician for his cooperation with some of its initiatives. The government has now filed a request of dissolution of the Family Federation as a religious corporation with the Tokyo District Court, and proceedings are ongoing.
While more radical proposals were rejected, Law 89 orders religious corporations against which a request for dissolution has been filed to submit periodical reports about their assets and notify administrative agencies before disposing of real estate. The law also allows the “victims” of these religious corporations, under certain circumstances, to access and examine the inventory of the organizations’ assets.
Law 89 was criticized for its vague notion of “victims” and the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT) has now published draft guidelines with another long title, “Criteria for Operation Concerning the Designation of Designated Religious Corporations and Specially Designated Religious Corporations under the Law on Special Provisions for the Operation of the Japan Legal Support Center for Prompt and Smooth Relief of Victims of Specific Wrongful Acts, and Similar, and Special Provisions of the Disposition and Management of Property by Religious Corporations.” The draft guidelines are now open to public comments before being enacted in their final form.
According to Law 89, religious corporations against which a dissolution request has been filed can be of two types: “designated religious corporations” and “specially designated religious corporations.” If there is a “substantial” number of “victims” a group will be listed as a “designated religious corporation.” If there is a risk that its assets may disappear, the group will be considered a “specially designated religious corporation.” The organizations in the “specially designated” list will be under stricter surveillance with respect to their assets, and “victims” (meaning their lawyers) would have an easier access to their inventories and accounts.
The guidelines are supposed to clarify the two notions of “victims” and “substantial number.” In fact, they do not clarify much, and leave a broad margin to the subjective and arbitrary appreciation by the MEXT.
“Victims” are defined as persons who have suffered because of the “specific torts” on which the request for dissolution has been based, either before or after the request has been filed. These are persons who “have or may have legal rights (e.g., the right to claim damages) based on the specific torts.”
The question is how we may know that a certain person “may have legal rights” based on the “specific torts” and therefore be considered a “victim.” The guidelines explicitly quote, approvingly, an opinion of December 12, 2023, by the Legal Affairs Committee of the House of Councillors (the upper house of the Japanese Parliament [Diet]) stating that “those who have no clear intention to file a claim are also considered as victims,” as well as “those who have already received compensation.”
With all due respect to the Legal Affairs Committee, this does not make sense. The aim of such a definition seems to be to simply inflate the number of “victims,” well beyond those who have won court cases against the religious organization (who logically, and by applying objective criteria, should be the only ones counted as “victims”). “Victims,” according to the Legal Affairs Committee and the guidelines, include those who have settled cases with the religious corporation and received a compensation. However, by definition, the aim of a settlement is not to establish what really happened in a controversy but simply to avoid further expensive court proceedings by coming to a mutually acceptable agreement between the parties. The fact that a person entered into a settlement with the religious corporation does not certify that she is a “victim.”
Even more bizarre is the reference to those who have no intention to file claims against the religious corporation. They may be perfectly happy current members of the religious organization, or ex-members who have no special grudges against it. Yet, the anti-cult lawyers who are behind the current campaign against the Unification Church and other “cults,” the media, or the MEXT may claim that even if they have no complaints against the religious organization they “should” have such complaints—if they don’t, perhaps they were “brainwashed”—and therefore are counted as “victims.”
Note also that no procedure is mentioned through which the religious organization may dispute the status of “victim” of a person counted as such by the MEXT. For all practical purposes, a “victim” is a “victim” if the MEXT, which would often rely on information supplied by the anti-cult lawyers, says so—and this even in the case when the “victim” herself denies being a “victim.”
As for the notion of “significant number” of “victims,” the guidelines state that the meaning of “significant” “should be determined on a case-by-case basis,” but “in general a few dozen victims will be deemed to constitute a ‘substantial number.’” Whether “a few dozen” complainants in a large organization is a “substantial number” may be disputed. If we assume (my purpose is not to establish exact figures, I am just constructing an example) that the Unification Church has had 600,000 members in Japan in the period considered by the MEXT, 48 complainants (a hypothetical number that would correspond to “a few dozen”) would represent less than 0.01% of the devotees, a percentage that does not look that “substantial.”
What is worse is the suggested mathematics. The guidelines state that “is not necessary to identify individual victims and show that there is a substantial number of them; it is sufficient that there is a possibility that there may be a substantial number of them.” If we do not do an actual count, how do we know that there is what the guidelines call a “reasonable possibility” that there may be a “substantial number” of “victims”? The guidelines answer that the “possibility” should be established from “information received from administrative agencies” and “consultations,” by which presumably (and bases on its past behavior) the MEXT means consulting “apostate” ex-members and anti-cult organizations. Again, there is no procedure allowing the targeted religious corporations to challenge these highly speculative numbers, nor are there sanctions for those who would supply fraudulent information and estimates to the MEXT.
If the purpose of the guidelines was to eliminate the vagueness of Law 89 about what “victims” and “substantial number” mean, their attempt to achieve this aim fails spectacularly. Or perhaps not, as a clear answer is provided: both who is a “victim” and how many “victims” they are will be decided by the anti-cult organizations that supply information to the MEXT. Their designations and estimates will not be disputed even if the persons identified as “victims” would claim they are no “victims” at all.
Some may believe this is only a by-product of the current emotion in Japan fueled by the media and causing the public opinion and the legislators to support any form of punishment targeting the Unification Church, no matter how unfair it is. However, once established, criteria to identify and count “victims” of unpopular religious organizations will be easily applied to any other group the media or the anti-cult organization will designate as a “cult” for their own purposes. This is simply another nail in the coffin of freedom of religion or belief in Japan.
