The government relies on 32 civil court cases, whose decisions were tainted by prejudices against the UC. Some condoned the criminal practice of deprogramming.
by Patricia Duval
Article 4 of 5. Read article 1, article 2, and article 3.
The thirty-two court rulings relied upon by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (“MEXT”) in its action seeking the dissolution of the Unification Church present blatant flaws in their review procedure, which infringe the right to a fair trial.
The main finding of Japanese civil courts, which MEXT is relying on, is that the Unification Church exerted an undue influence on potential donors by making them anxious about hell, karma, and the need of redemption.
According to MEXT, UC believers restricted the “free decision” of donors and “prevented their normal judgment” by “teaching their doctrine about the Original Sin” and by making them “anxious” about their karma or that of their families.
However, such beliefs are common to other traditional religions, either Christian or Buddhist, and humans’ redemption is one of the main purposes of all religions.
The sale of indulgences by the Catholic Church did not cause its dissolution nor did the threat of Purgatory.
“Undue influence” or “mental manipulation” is a vague and arbitrary notion that is being used against the Unification Church in a discriminatory manner.
When can a religious preaching be characterized as “undue influence” or “mental manipulation”? When it is done by the Unification Church, has been the answer of the courts, after a fake assessment against “social norms,” an invalid and discriminatory criterion based on public opinion.
But public opinion has no place in courts of law. The right to a fair trial mandates that the courts rule with no negative preconceptions or presumptions of guilt.
The concept of undue influence or mental manipulation has been debunked by scholars, legal experts and courts internationally.
The European Court of Human Rights ruled on 10 June 2010, in the case “Jehovah’s Witnesses of Moscow v. Russia,” that “there is no generally accepted and scientific definition of what constitutes ‘mind control’,” and denied the validity of this ground for the dissolution of the applicant religious corporation by Russian authorities.
The same theory of “mind control” was used by the Japanese civil courts to discard the evidence provided by the defense that the former believers chose to donate due to their strong faith at the time. Using the vague and arbitrary notion of “mental manipulation,” the judges rescinded their donations and sentenced the Unification Church to damages for “infringing their free will,” without even taking in consideration any evidence of their faith.
Still from the same assumption, the courts rejected the argument of statute of limitation raised by the Unification Church.
The facts involved in all these cases were very old, happened some twenty to forty years before, so the defense argued that they were time-barred (over three years old). However, the courts refused to apply the statute of limitation in force for civil suits, finding that the “victims” were not aware of being victims until they met with the accusation lawyers, as they were under the “undue influence” of the Church.
This constitutes a discriminatory application of the law and an infringement of the principle of equality of arms between the defense and the accusation, which is a key component of the right to a fair trial.
Additionally, in many of their findings, the courts mention that the “victims” benefited from “rescue” or “protection,” a soft term used for deprogramming, which means that they were coerced into abandoning their faith and persuaded to sue the Unification Church.
Those cases appear then to have been fabricated against the Unification Church, by the anti-Unification Church lawyers or the deprogrammers who incited the deprogrammed members to sue the Church to prove their apostasy.
It can also be concluded that their faith at the time they made some donations is established for fact, since coercion was needed to have them recant their beliefs.
The hearings at the Kobe District Court are instructive in this regard, when the Court heard a “deprogrammer,” a Protestant pastor hired by the claimant’s family to persuade their kin, whom they had abducted and confined, to leave the Unification Church. The deprogrammer recognized that “protection” under coercion or “deprogramming” was a nationwide activity at the time and was necessary to crush the Unification Church believers’ certainties (Kobe District Court, Minutes of the Court, 21 May 1996, p. 25, and Minutes of the Court, 26 March 1996, pp. 81–2).
Alerted by a detailed report on this deprogramming practice in August 2014, the UN Human Rights Committee made the following recommendation to Japan: “21. The Committee is concerned at reports of abductions and forced confinement of converts to new religious movements by members of their families in an effort to de-convert them (arts. 2, 9, 18, 26). The State party should take effective measures to guarantee the right of every person not to be subject to coercion that would impair his or her freedom to have or to adopt a religion or belief” (Concluding Observations, 20 August 2014, CCPR/C/JPN/CO/6).
A few months later in November 2014, for the first time, a victim of such misdeeds, Toru Goto, was awarded substantial damages in a civil case against his family and two deprogrammers by the Tokyo High Court for the twelve year-illegal confinement and forced persuasion he was subjected to in a failed attempt to have him recant his faith. The Court granted him compensation commensurate to the harm suffered and ruled that the “deprogramming” done by Pastor Yasutomo Matsunaga was illegal; a decision soon confirmed by the Supreme Court.
Even if this deprogramming practice seemingly ended thereafter, the attempt to eliminate the Unification Church and its members persisted and materializes today in the dissolution request presented by the Japanese Government.
Out of the thirty-two tort cases relied upon by MEXT to claim the dissolution of the Church religious corporation, 121 claimants appear to have been “deprogrammed” or “protected,” pursuant to the courts’ findings themselves.
Not only the civil courts heard the deprogrammers or at least knew about the deprogramming for a fact and kept silent about these coercive activities in ensuing rulings, but they found an “infringement of free will” by the Unification Church for its peaceful proselytism activity and the conversion of the claimant to its faith, without any coercion, in the first place.
Only one of the courts, the Sapporo High Court, mentioned the deprogramming in its reasoning and answered to the defense lawyers who raised a violation of the right to a fair trial. The lawyers argued that the fact that many of the appellees (former believers) renounced their religion due to measures such as the restriction of personal freedom was a serious issue, and that ignoring this in the judgment violated the duty of fairness and impartiality of the judiciary.
The Sapporo High Court ruled on March 14, 2003, as follows: “As acknowledged above, all the appellees have left (renounced) the appellant’s organization, and many of them were subjected to restrictions on their personal freedom by their relatives during the process of leaving the organization. Such restrictions, in relation to the appellees in question, may in themselves be deemed illegal (not permissible as justified acts). However, this concerns the relationship between those who carried out such acts and the respective appellees, and is a matter that should be dealt with separately as necessary. The existence of such circumstances does not in any way affect the appellant’s responsibility toward the appellees (if anything, it brought about the termination of such responsibility)” (p. 24 of the decision).
And the High Court rejected the defense lawyers’ claim of unfairness of the trial and ruled that there had been infringement of the free will of the donors by the Unification Church’s solicitation.
The High Court refused to take into consideration the fact that the faith of the donors was strong in the first place since it required force and coercion to have them change their minds.
More appallingly, it mentioned that the coercive practice of confinement and forced de-conversion was illegal but discarded it as another distinct private matter. It declared it irrelevant to the case and stated that “if anything, it brought about the termination” of the UC’s responsibility, meaning it actually put an end to the UC’s undue influence on its members.
All this reveals an obvious bias from the Courts and a tacit approval of the “deprogramming” practices no matter how illegal they might be.
It also reveals the endorsement of deprogramming by the Japanese authorities (MEXT) who filed for dissolution of the Church on this basis.
This clearly constitutes a violation of Article 18.2 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights: “2. No one shall be subject to coercion which would impair his freedom to have or to adopt a religion or belief of his choice.”
It represents a clear violation too of Article 14 protecting the right to a fair trial.
