When victims are presented as perpetrators, a great injustice becomes a blatant absurdity. Yet, it happens in contemporary Japan.
by Marco Respinti*
Article 3 of 4. Read article 1 and article 2.
*Under the title “The Crisis of Religious Freedom and Democracy in Japan,” this paper was presented in different versions at conferences organized and hosted in December 2024 by the International Coalition for Religious Freedom (ICRF) Japan Committee and constituting a lecture tour in Japan that brought the author to speak at Bunka Koryu Kaika, in Hiroshima, on the 6th, at Tokyo City Vision Center in Tokyo Kyobashi on the 8th, at Niterra Civic Hall in Nagoya, on the 9th, and at ACROS Fukuoka, in Fukuoka, on the 10th.
We just reached the core of the matter. Assassin Yamagami committed his criminal act because he followed the hate campaign against the Unification Church/Family Federation (FF) that is prevailing in Japan.
The assassin’s hate for the Church was fueled by the hate speech of the anti-Unification Church activists. In fact, to hide their responsibility in the entire process of denigration of certain religions and spiritual beliefs that contributed to create a climate of hate and fear, these activists and “cult”-hunters succeeded in a spectacular inversion of facts. They turned the victim into the perpetrator. In Abe’s case and its aftermath, clearly the Unification Church is in fact the victim.
Yet, it was and is portrayed as the perpetrator, producing a disturbing result. If—the perverse reasoning goes—the church exasperated a man to the point of assassinating a prominent politician for his alleged obscure ties with it, Yamagami may have overreacted but surely that politician deserved his fate and the church all the blame. Said differently, that tainted logic concludes that it is possible to sympathize with the assassin, because, after all, he played the objective role of the avenger, at the end of the day benefiting Japanese society.
I fear that this is what, covertly, many harbor in their hearts.
Let me now just suggest one further elaboration. Yes, the assassination of Abe is quite a serious misdeed in itself, but it becomes totally staggering when we think that it ripened in a climate of smear and hate which is based on slanders and lies. Unfortunately, that climate is not over. It still increases the level of suspicion against the Unification Church and, God forbids, may also cause new crimes.
I have the strong impression that a major injustice is being perpetrated in Japan. The victim was made the perpetrator and is now called to pay the price for the deeds of others. Yamagami’s criminal act produced grave consequences, the end of which is not yet in sight. In fact, his statement of accusation against the FF ignited a series of events that led to the government’s request to dissolve the church as a religious corporation on October 13, 2023. In Japan, dissolution requires a court case, which is currently pending. In parallel, as both a cause and an effect, the anti-cult lawyers revamped all the old campaigns against the FF and, while they were at it, targeted other conservative religions, in particular the Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Now, why should the FF be dissolved? What crime did it commit? Did the FF kill former Prime Minister Abe? Of course not. Through “a mixture of truths referring to events that occurred decades ago, half-truths, and outright lies,” as twelve NGOs, representing a who’s who of religious liberty advocacy throughout the world, protested the Japanese government’s actions in October 2023, the FF is now being described as an “anti-social organization” that needs to be dissolved for the sake of the public good. But the case is all constructed on false premises and even more false conclusions, bringing the afore mentioned NGOs to describe the call for dissolution of FF a “measure reminiscent of practices current in China and Russia rather than in democratic countries.” It is in fact “out of proportion with the charges raised against it and not consistent with the Family Federation’s law-abiding behavior. It will also open the way to similar action against other religious minorities unpopular with certain lawyers or political groups and the media.”
Scholars have already contributed much to clarify this blatant case of injustice. Patricia Duval is an attorney and a member of the Paris Bar—and if I may, another friend, with whom this speaker had the opportunity to conduct journalistic (on my side) and legal (on hers) investigations on serious violations of religious liberty even resulting in murders. She has a degree in public law from the Sorbonne University in Paris, France, 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.
On September 22, 2024, she presented to various United Nations personalities and institutions a report on the case of the FF in Japan, which became commonly known as the “Duval Report” (accompanied by a useful executive summary). It is the most complete and detailed analysis of the case to date and “Bitter Winter” had the privilege to publish it.
The “Duval Report” is intended for politicians and the general public. Duval soon followed up with another important document in which she presents a more technical legal analysis of the case. “Bitter Winter” had the privilege to publish that text as well. I urge all to read and study Duval’s publications for a sounder and more precise legal understanding of the whole matter.
Duval recalls that, in the past, members of FF “had been subjected to abduction and coercion to recant their faith (‘deprogramming’),” a situation that urged the Church to send “a detailed report to various United Nations human rights bodies to expose the outrageous violations they had suffered of their most basic rights.” After a recommendation from the UN Human Rights Committee to Japan to put an end to this practice, and a 2014 ruling by the High Court of Tokyo confirmed by the Supreme Court in 2015, the obnoxious phenomenon disappeared, although much later than it did in other democratic countries (with the unfortunate exception of South Korea).
However, a by-product of the past deprogrammings is that FF members who had been deprogrammed were asked by anti-cult lawyers to sue the FF for damages. Indeed, if they refused to sue, they were declared as still not totally deprogrammed and confined again. This created an avalanche of civil tort cases against the FF.
A tort is of course a wrongful act or an infringement of a right, leading to civil legal liability. Duval affirms that creating multiple tort cases against the FF was literally part of a strategy aimed at destroying the Church, a strategy that violates international principles of religious liberty. So doing, Duval adds, Japan keeps introducing limitations to religious liberty that are not compatible with United Nations covenants it has signed and ratified.
Basically, the civil tort cases all rest on the discredited theory of brainwashing. When plaintiffs, coached by the anti-cult lawyers, report that they were “compelled” to join the FF or to donate, they do not mean they were coerced to do so by violence or at gunpoint. They admit they joined and donate spontaneously, and at that time were persuaded they were doing this for highly moral and spiritual reasons. Only after having been “deprogrammed” and having been socialized into the anti-cult ideology by the lawyers hostile to the FF, they retrospectively “understood” that their choices were not really free but resulted from “brainwashing.”
In the United States and at the European Court of Human Rights, judges have concluded since the past century that “brainwashing” is not an accepted scientific concept and cannot be used in courts of law. In what has been hailed as a definitive summary on the subject, published in 2022 by Cambridge University Press, one of the most prestigious university presses in the world, my colleague and friend Italian sociologist Massimo Introvigne, founder and managing director of the Center for Studies on New Religions (CESNUR) and Editor-in-Chief of “Bitter Winter” magazine, has concluded that the idea that “cults” use “brainwashing” has been debunked so many times by academics and courts of laws that it is today no more respectable than the theory that the Earth is flat. Yet, France and it seems now also Japan are defying international academic ridicule by using it as a basis for laws, regulations, and legal actions.
A second point regards proselytism. It seems there is a misunderstanding prevailing in Japan about the content of FoRB and the obligations Japan has freely assumed and should respect after signing and ratifying international treaties protecting FoRB. It is sometimes claimed in Japan that the actions against the FF do not threaten FoRB since FF believers, even if the religious corporation is dissolved, will maintain the freedom to believe what they want in their private homes and activities. This is a false idea of FoRB, often advocated by totalitarian regimes such as China and Russia as it suits their own purposes. FoRB as defined by international treaties is a social as well as an individual right. It includes the right to publicly worship, to own properties, to solicit donations, and to engage in proselytizing activities.
Japan claims that in the case of FF (and other groups, such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses) proselytizing is “anti-social” because it is based on “brainwashing” and on manipulating the fears of perspective converts. As Patricia Duval has demonstrated, not only these limitations of proselytizing rights are incompatible with international law. They may easily apply to all religions. Jews and Christians find in Psalm 111 a sentence that the Latin translation of the Bible known as “Vulgata” rendered as “Initium sapientiae timor Domini,” “the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.” Ideally, we should perform good deeds for the love of God. But the author of the Psalms, knowing human nature, understood that many, at least initially, refrain from committing evil and do good for “the fear of God.” This is normal and even “the beginning of wisdom”—although the beginning only.
Marco Respinti is an Italian professional journalist, member of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), author, translator, and lecturer. He has contributed and contributes to several journals and magazines both in print and online, both in Italy and abroad. Author of books and chapter in books, he has translated and/or edited works by, among others, Edmund Burke, Charles Dickens, T.S. Eliot, Russell Kirk, J.R.R. Tolkien, Régine Pernoud and Gustave Thibon. A Senior fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal (a non-partisan, non-profit U.S. educational organization based in Mecosta, Michigan), he is also a founding member as well as a member of the Advisory Council of the Center for European Renewal (a non-profit, non-partisan pan-European educational organization based in The Hague, The Netherlands). A member of the Advisory Council of the European Federation for Freedom of Belief, in December 2022, the Universal Peace Federation bestowed on him, among others, the title of Ambassador of Peace. From February 2018 to December 2022, he has been the Editor-in-Chief of International Family News. He serves as Director-in-Charge of the academic publication The Journal of CESNUR and Bitter Winter: A Magazine on Religious Liberty and Human Rights.
