The Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, formerly known as the Church of Unification, was founded in Korea in 1954 by the religious leader Rev. Dr. Sun Myung Moon, but has experienced substantial growth, especially in 1958 after its founding in Japan.
Although on November 27, 2020, the Hiroshima High Court convicted five people for kidnapping and imprisoning a married couple with the purpose of de-converting them so as to force them to leave the Unification Church, by implicitly recognizing their inalienable right to their religious faith, in 2023, Japan's Ministry of Education and Culture, under the pressure of anti-cult groups that rode the wave generated by the assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe,on July 8, 2022, filed a request of dissolution of the Unification Church.
As a result of this request, on October 14, 2023, Bitter Winter promoted an open letter, also signed by FOB, stating, “We have followed with great concern the developments in Japan after the assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, including the attempt to make the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification (formerly known as the Unification Church) somewhat responsible for it and to request its dissolution as a religious organization. [...] We urge Japanese authorities and courts not to proceed with a measure that would forever taint the image of Japan as a country committed to democratic principles, including FoRB. Pressing for dissolution will align Japan with totalitarian regimes “where unpopular religious minorities are ‘liquidated’ after the ground has been prepared by slanderous media campaigns'” […].
Despite protests from the international academic world, on March 25, 2025, the Tokyo District Court ordered the dissolution as a recognized entity of the Unification Church. The ruling deprives the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification of recognition as a religious body-and thus of tax exemption-but does not prohibit its activities on Japanese soil.
On the issue, Bitter Winter published a series of five articles that are a pointed examination provided by attorney Patricia Duval, member of FOB's Scientific Committee. Below we republish the articles in one document.
Table of contents
1. The Religious Aim of Donations
4. The 2009 Declaration of Compliance
5. Freedom of Religion or Belief
1. The Religious Aim of Donations ⬆︎
The dissolution decision is based on the accusation of soliciting excessive donations. But their religious nature is ignored.
by Patricia Duval — The Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, previously known as the Unification Church, referred to as “Unification Church” or the “Church” in this series, has recently been the subject of media exposure worldwide due to the Japanese government’s decision to request dissolution of its 600,000 followers’ affiliate in Japan, and the decision of the Tokyo District Court to grant that request in a first instance ruling on March 25, 2025.
The whole issue is presented as a financial one, a problem with donations. The Church is accused of having raised excessive donations and “ruined” a significant number of followers.
The purpose of this series is to offer a global review of the court decision in context: first, to clarify the use of donations per the findings of the government itself; second, to describe the Japanese context; third, to analyze the court decision; and fourth, to draw all the necessary conclusions.
The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT), which oversees religious affairs and requested the dissolution of the religious corporation, described in its dissolution claim the purpose or use of the donations as follows: “The corporation uses these believer donations as its primary source of funds to cover expenditures such as proselytization costs, church maintenance expenses, operational expenses, ceremonial expenses, international missionary assistance expenses, financial outlays such as fixed asset acquisitions, and special expenditures including charitable donations.”
The Unification Church followers claim to be a Christian denomination, and their faith is based on their interpretation of the Bible. They believe that Jesus Christ was the first Messiah and their founder Reverend Sun Myung Moon (1925–2012) is the second Messiah, who came to accomplish what Jesus could not finish, which is the restoration of family values and family love, based on which peace and unification of humanity can be achieved worldwide.
Donations are intended to maintain the religious institutions of the Church, ensure the practice and propagation of the faith, including missionary assistance worldwide and charitable activities. This is nothing different from what all religious denominations do worldwide.
It is inherent to the right to manifest one’s religion or belief, which includes the right to establish and maintain religious institutions, and the right to solicit donations (General Assembly of the United Nations, “Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief,” General Assembly Resolution 36/55, November 25 1981, Article 6 [b] and [f]). Solicitation of donations is therefore an activity that is totally legitimate in itself.
Reverend Sun Myung Moon with his wife and successor, Dr. Hak Ja Han Moon. Source tparents.org.
MEXT provided an exhibit to the dissolution request with the following testimony: “Section 2: Testimony by General Affairs Bureau Chief Nobuo Okamura (Exhibit B6-3). On December 19, 2001, Nobuo Okamura, General Affairs Bureau Chief, testified to the following facts in the Tokyo District Court (Testimony Transcript, Pages 7–8): 1. Donations were used not only for domestic expenses but also for international highway projects and overseas missionary work. 2. Donations were first sent to the Headquarters of the World Missions in America and then distributed to overseas destinations. 3. Funds were used for various seminars, conventions, meetings, and church construction worldwide. 4. Financial support was also provided for activities in impoverished countries. 5. The funds were not collected for Rev. Sun Myung Moon.”
It can be concluded that the donations collected from Japanese believers were: 1) never used for personal enrichment; and 2) on the contrary, were designed to spread the faith and help people worldwide, in particular in impoverished countries. This actually is in line with the stated motto of the founder, Reverend Moon, which was: “Living for the sake of others.”
In the same document, MEXT provided the list of countries “supported” by the Church through donations solicited in Japan. “Section 3: Specific Supported Countries. The Unification Church targets 194 countries worldwide for missionary activities. Donations from Japan have been used for missionary work in Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin America, and other countries globally. As a result, church foundations have been established across North and South America, Europe, Africa, and Asia-Oceania. Since 2013, missionary activities by second-generation believers from Japan have also become active, with financial aid provided for their overseas missions. The countries where second-generation believers were dispatched include: North and South America: 8 countries in Central and South America. Asia-Pacific: 14 countries. Europe and the Middle East: 9 countries. Africa: 10 countries.”
All the above is taken from the findings of MEXT during the dissolution proceedings.
The procedure for requesting a court to order the dissolution of a religious corporation under Japanese law comprises a pre-trial phase of questioning the corporation in order to compile information for the case. From November 2022 to the end of 2023, MEXT sent seven sets of questions, which the court refers to as “requests for reports” to the Church, related to its structure, functioning, religious practice and activities, and litigation instances. Based on the reports received, MEXT compiled information, including the one cited above, and filed it as part of its dissolution claim to the Tokyo District Court.
However, the court did not mention in its decision the part of the information that could have explained the use of donations. It simply ignored these facts and the faith motivation for raising donations. The court instead found that the solicitation of donations was motivated by a “malicious intent,” based on some old civil court rulings of tort, a point that will be developed further in this analysis.
The fact that these elements were not mentioned in the decision evidences that the court did not take into account the evidence in favor and against, applying due process of law, but on the contrary showed an obvious bias and, in order to reach its preconceived decision of dissolution, used only the arguments that could support it.
As a matter of fact, in the European Union and Middle East alone, as at 2020, the Church was duly registered and operating in the following countries: Austria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Germany, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Switzerland, Albania, Bosnia Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Moldova, Romania, Russia, Israel, Turkey, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, United Kingdom, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Belgium, France, and the Netherlands.
Japan sets itself apart from the international community by ordering the dissolution of a Church well-established worldwide.
2. The Japanese Context ⬆︎
The court decision is the culmination of almost forty years of harassment of the religious movement by politically motivated and greedy lawyers.
Press conference of the anti-Unification-Church lawyers after the dissolution order. Screenshot.
The decision by the Tokyo District Court on March 25, 2025 to order the dissolution of the Unification Church may be, if upheld in appeal, the consecration of a long term undertaking by the National Network of Lawyers Against Spiritual Sales (NNLASS), a group of anti-cult lawyers who accuse the Church faith to be a lure and religious donations a mere profit-making activity.
The Network was created in 1987 by far-left obedience lawyers with the stated purpose of eliminating the Unification Church from Japan, since the early times when it was fighting against communism. Reverend Moon believed that the realization of world peace required preventing the expansion of atheistic communism. To this end, he established organizations such as the International Federation for Victory over Communism (VOC) in the post–World War II era when spirituality was at risk with the expansion of communism in the area, and the National Federation for the Unification of North and South Korea, making efforts toward the unification of the Korean Peninsula.
The National Network of Lawyers Against Spiritual Sales started to actively combat the Church and, to this end, has been closely linked to the “deprogramming,” coerced de-conversion from alleged brainwashing, of the Church members since its inception.
For over forty years, around 4,300 members of the Unification Church in Japan have been subjected to forced de-conversion through abduction and confinement by families, and imposed indoctrination by professional “deprogrammers” against the Church beliefs, without the authorities lifting a finger.
The lawyers’ network has been supporting these faith-breaking practices for decades and pushing the members who finally renounced their faith to file civil suits against the Church. This was a way to prove their apostasy and their ticket out of deprogramming. It is this systematic filing of tort cases and demolition enterprise that the District Court validated on March 25, with a decision appealed to the High Court.
Pursuant to Article 81.1 of the Religious Corporations Act, the government can request a dissolution order against a religious corporation if “in violation of laws and regulations, it commits an act which is clearly found to harm public welfare substantially.”
The Tokyo District Court had to rule on whether, in the absence of criminal acts, civil decisions in private litigation could be considered a “violation of laws and regulations” in order to pronounce the dissolution of a religious corporation.
Actually this question was given a positive answer by the Supreme Court on March 3, 2025 in a case ancillary to the dissolution one (relating to the pre-dissolution procedure). The District Court adopted the same findings as this precedent, which was a reversal of, and a tailor-made, case law to obtain the dissolution of the Unification Church.
Japanese case law had in the past consistently answered this question in the negative. And succeeding Japanese governments maintained this interpretation. In 1994 and 1998, they rejected the lawyers’ Network’s pressures to file for dissolution of the Church. In 2012, the government was sued by the Network for its unwillingness to start a dissolution case and won.
However, the assassination of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (1954–2022) in July 2022 was a game-changer. The assassin, Tetsuya Yamagami, targeted Abe due to his expressed sympathy for the Church’s peacebuilding activities and to the fact that his mother, a current member of the Church, had made substantial donations some twenty years before.
The Network of lawyers, who had been relentlessly accumulating the civil cases against the Church and could not resign themselves to the refusal of dissolution, took advantage of the murder. The influence of the anti-cult movement in triggering the murderer’s act was never investigated although the connection was made public. Ignoring the fact that the murder had been committed by an opponent of the Church, the lawyers’ Network made the assassin the victim and attacked the Church, blaming it for the crime and calling it a “criminal” and “anti-social” organization. Media pressure and accusations precipitated the downfall of Abe’s ruling majority and the Church became the useful scapegoat in the story.
After the assassination, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who was under pressure once more to file for dissolution of the Church, maintained first that it was impossible to do so since the Church had never been found guilty of any crime. However, due to the increasing pressure of the Network in the media, Kishida made a U-turn within twenty-four hours, and announced that he believed that civil tort decisions were enough to file for dissolution.
The dissolution claim was filed in October 2023 by the MEXT, which oversees religious corporations. This was the claim that the Tokyo District Court had to decide on.
Since Abe’s assassination, the heat has been kept up in the media by the lawyers’ Network pushing for the adoption of more and more repressive measures against the Church and its members. The ruling LDP party was put a knife to its throat to cut any ties with the Church. Any and all scholars in the country became scared of speaking up, and of being suspected of any allegiance to the Church—in particular due to their traumatic experience after the 1995 Aum Shinrikyo sarin gas attack in the Tokyo metropolitan, when anyone who had previously expressed sympathy for that group was put on the spot.
A total paranoia was then created by those lawyers to curb any support to the Church, accusing sympathizers of being criminals themselves. This toxic atmosphere has persisted to this day.
In this context, unsurprisingly, the District Court in Tokyo on March 25 simply validated the decades-long endeavors to reach the goal of Church dissolution, in the following way:
- Harvesting the fruits of deprogramming (forced de-conversions): the court relied upon thirty-two civil tort decisions, most of them launched by former members who recanted their faith under coercion, for facts dating in majority from decades before, adding settlements in and out of court to stuff up the finding that the Church had “caused damage on an unprecedented and enormous scale.”
- In the absence, or significant decrease, of claims during recent years, the court resorted to “reasonable inference” of continuity of the nuisance, using a nebulous, entirely fictional theory of potential “victims” who would not dare to speak up.
- In spite of the evidence of goodwill of the Church to comply with laws and regulations, and ignoring the faith of the believers who solicited donations, the court declared a malicious intent in soliciting donations and assumed that perpetuation of the religious doctrine and structure of the Church would make the continuation of torts inevitable.
- In the absence of any criminal conduct or violation of the law, the court decided the dissolution of the religious corporation for having infringed unknown and undefined norms of “social acceptability,” and damaged “public welfare” and “the peaceful life” of the majority, in total violation of Japan’s commitments in human rights treaties.
This court decision is iniquitous in many aspects and illegal under international human rights law.
3. Reading the Decision ⬆︎
The District Court relied not only on civil cases but also on settlements and statements, and ignored the issue of deprogramming.
In the decision of March 25, 2025, of the Tokyo District Court, ordering the dissolution of the Unification Church, the court first addresses the interpretation of “violation of laws and regulations” (Article 81.1 of the Religious Corporations Act).
The court states: “However, although it cannot be said that Article 709 of the Civil Code is a provision that prohibits certain acts, the acts that constitute the tort in this article are acts that are evaluated as illegal under the law of torts, that is, acts that violate certain legal norms, and the actor is held liable for damages under the provisions of this article.”
Article 709 of the Civil Code provides: “A person who has intentionally or negligently infringed any right of others, or legally protected interest of others, shall be liable to compensate any damages resulting in consequence.”
So, the court equated violation of the law with infringement of the rights of others, which is a private matter. As explained above, this new far-fetched interpretation, which was first adopted by the Supreme Court three weeks before, has been tailor-made for the Unification Church and its dissolution.
The court found that the acts of the Church members “restricted individuals’ freedom of decision-making, forcing them to make donations and purchases of goods while their ability to make normal judgments was impaired,” based on the unscientific and debunked theory of mental manipulation.
It added that these “acts are illegal as they deviate from what is considered socially appropriate, and they constitute ‘violations of laws and regulations’ as unlawful acts under the Civil Code.”
So the court, based on an alleged infringement of people’s free will, found a deviation from “social appropriateness” which would constitute a violation of laws and regulations.
However, this interpretation violates the commitments of Japan to protect freedom of religion or belief under Article 18.3 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (“ICCPR” or “Covenant”) it has ratified in 1979: “Freedom to manifest one’s religion or beliefs may be subject only to such limitations as are prescribed by law and are necessary to protect public safety, order, health, or morals or the fundamental rights and freedoms of others.”
The requirement of “prescribed by law” is not fulfilled if the law is not precise enough to predict its application and to adapt one’s behavior accordingly. (United Nations Human Rights Committee, “CCPR General Comment no. 27: Article 12 [Freedom of Movement],” November 2, 1999: “The laws authorizing the application of restrictions should use precise criteria and may not confer unfettered discretion on those charged with their execution”).
Deviation from “social appropriateness” for sure does not meet the requirement of precision of the law that would allow for such a restriction to manifest one’s religion as the dissolution of a religious corporation; nor does the alleged infringement of unknown and undefined “social norms.” It makes this measure inconsistent with the commitments that Japan has made to the international community.
Then, the court had to assess whether the second requirement of Article 81.1 was fulfilled, i.e., whether the harm to public welfare could be characterized as “substantial.”
The court found that “the illegal acts in (a) above, committed by the followers of the interested parties, were repeated on a nationwide scale for a period of about 43 years, from around 1980 to around 2023, and caused at least 1,559 victims (140 victims with final judgments, 448 victims with court settlements, and 971 victims with out-of-court settlements).”
These figures will be discussed below.
The court concluded that, “These illegal acts have caused many people to suffer significant losses, and the peace of many people, including their relatives, has been disturbed.” It found the harm to public welfare to be “substantial” and ordered the dissolution of the religious corporation.
The use of protection of public welfare to restrict freedom of religion is also questionable, and so is the protection of the peaceful life of the majority. It violates Article 18.3 ICCPR mentioned above. The only permitted limitations to the right to manifest one’s beliefs concern extreme situations involving for example threats to public order or safety, but infringements of public welfare or peace of the majority are not amongst the situations that would justify restriction of this fundamental right. Actually, protection of freedom of religion or belief means protection of religious minorities “that may be the subject of hostility on the part of a predominant” community (United Nations Human Rights Committee, “CCPR General Comment No. 22: Article 18 [Freedom of Thought, Conscience or Religion)],” July 30, 1993).
The United Nations Human Rights Committee has constantly urged Japan to stop using “public welfare” as an exception to civil liberties, and in particular to that of practicing one’s religion or belief. But the Japanese government has persistently turned a deaf ear and left this exception in the Constitution and various laws, in particular the Civil Code (Article 1.1: “Private rights must conform to the public welfare”) and the law on religious corporations (Article 81.1 on dissolution, previously cited).
The Tokyo District Court relied expressly on these two legal provisions for its decision to order the dissolution of a major religious corporation of around 600,000 followers, making this decision illegal under international human rights law.
The figures given by the court and mentioned above (1,559 victims: 140 victims with final judgments, 448 victims with court settlements, and 971 victims with out-of-court settlements) rely first on thirty-two civil tort cases lost by the Church with decisions that MEXT filed in its dissolution claim.
However, the court started its argument by mentioning four criminal cases in 2007 and 2008 against followers who used to run private businesses of sale of good fortune items. This long-past practice had nothing to do with the Church, and the court as a matter of fact did not rely on them to rule the dissolution of the religious corporation. It looks as if the four criminal convictions for violation of the law on door-to-door sales, a practice of street selling that the Church instructed its members to stop long ago, were mentioned by the court to give a tint to the whole decision and damage the image of the Church from the outset. Following the attack line of the Network of lawyers against “spiritual sales” and MEXT, the court equated the sale of good fortune objects by private businesses with the solicitation of religious donations by the Church.
It relied on thirty-two civil tort cases lost by the Church over the years and swallowed, like the ruling courts had done, the Network lawyers’ theory that the Church religious doctrine was a means of infringement of the donors’ “free will” and they were under undue influence by the Church and should be refunded and compensated. In those rulings, the civil courts found tort and sentenced the Church to reimbursement of donations and to pay damages on the sole basis of an alleged infringement of the vague criteria of “social norms” or “socially acceptable norms.” Those rulings do not conform to the requirements of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights as detailed above and constitute in themselves a violation of the right to freedom of religion or belief and the right to a fair trial.
Interesting enough is that the court did not even mention the fact that a majority of the claimants had been forcefully de-converted and driven to sue the Church. It could not ignore this fact though, since the defense lawyer developed it in his pleadings and since a deprogrammer in one of the cases, Pastor Mamoru Takazawa, was cross-examined during the hearings at the Kobe District Court in 1996 and stated that he knew that this practice was normally illegal.
He added that he would nevertheless continue since “Once someone has firmly embraced the Unification Church beliefs, I believe it is impossible for them to leave naturally.” This, in the deprogrammer’s mind, justified the use of coercion against the Church believers. The court ignored this aspect of the story and, to the defense attorney’s plea that the tort claims obtained from members under coercion were unreliable, the court kept silent. It did not bother to answer or even mention it in its decision. The argument was a valid and factual one though, that could have challenged the figures provided to the court and given a new insight on the alleged damage caused by the Church and its continuation to this day.
The defense provided a diagram of the number of claims which followed closely the number of deprogramming incidents.
Court cases and deprogramming incidents.
In the above graph, the blue line represents the number of court cases, while the red line shows the number of abduction and confinement incidents. The number of court cases increases in proportion to the rise in confinement incidents, and decreases as the number of such incidents declines.
The number of incidents of deprogramming became null after the UN Human Rights Committee urged Japan to put an end to this practice in August 2014, and the Japanese courts for the first time granted substantial damages to a Church member for a 12-year deprogramming and ruled this practice illegal. The court ignored this factual argument and preferred to stress that there had been a huge number of claims since the 1980s, when this peak was actually created by a peak in the faith-breaking activities.
In order to stuff up its application for dissolution, which appeared weak since the number of thirty-two lost cases over a period of forty years, most of them dating from several decades back, is not significant, MEXT provided settlements in and out of court to the Tokyo District Court, which included them in its findings.
Regarding settlements in court, they concern former believers who filed a civil lawsuit seeking damages for the acts of soliciting donations and a settlement was reached in one hundred cases, including six cases out of the thirty-two above. In Japan, the judiciary encourages the resolution of disputes through settlement to bring cases to an early conclusion. In fact, nearly all of the cases in which the Church reached judicial settlements were the result of recommendations made by courts. As for settlements out of court, the number of claimants provided by MEXT relates to former believers who sent a notice to the Church, stating that the acts of soliciting donations constituted a tort, and an agreement was reached outside of court, including the payment of money.
To include settlements and voluntary refund of donations in the number of tort claims and to equate them with evidence of tortious misconduct, like the court did, is in itself questionable, since a claim for donation refund does not mean a ruling of tort, and no civil court has ever ruled on tort in these cases.
I refer here for more developments on this point to the in-depth review of the decision by Massimo Introvigne, a renowned sociologist of religions and attorney and former OSCE (Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe) Representative for combating racism, xenophobia, and religious discrimination.
The policy of settlement and refund followed by the Church at some point was motivated by the desire to avoid systematic, lengthy, and costly proceedings initiated by the Network of lawyers as part of its strategy to sink the Church. Even the refund of donations has been interpreted as evidence of guilt.
The District Court included the figures of refund of donations in its demonstration of tort and also included figures of written statements obtained by the MEXT under questionable conditions.
In spite of this artificial boosting of figures, the whole demonstration finally fell flat. The mountain gave birth to a mouse, since the court concluded that the overall number of claims had significantly decreased to none in the previous years, which is clearly evidenced in the diagram above (number of claims compared to number of deprogramming incidents).
The drop was also due to the extreme scrutiny by the Church of the solicitation of donations by its members and the adoption of internal measures to protect the Church. In particular, the Church adopted the 2009 Declaration of Compliance with existing laws and regulations, which is the subject of a lengthy review by the court in its decision.
4. The 2009 Declaration of Compliance ⬆︎
Paradoxically, the dissolution was pronounced after the methods for soliciting donations that the court had objected to had almost disappeared.
Following the criminal conviction of four individual members in 2007 and 2008, the Church gave specific guidance to its members, which has been ambiguously named “Declaration.”
The Tokyo District Court, in its decision of March 25, 2025, ordering the dissolution of the Unification Church, described this guidance as follows: “In the midst of the above-mentioned criminal cases, the Interested Party issued a compliance declaration in 2009, and in addition to the factors that had repeatedly been pointed out in the civil judgments made up to that point when determining the success or failure of the tort, it issued an official statement requesting Church leaders to supervise and guide believers in their compliance with laws and regulations, while also referring to the specific commercial transaction law violations (intimidation and harassment) that had been an issue in the above-mentioned criminal cases. In addition, the interested parties have continued to issue public notices and other documents that are an extension of the declaration and are intended to expand on it.”
So, the 2009 Declaration of Compliance was rather a series of instructions given by the Church than a single document. The court recognized that the Church actually implemented a whole policy “to expand on” the Declaration and ensure compliance with laws and regulations.
The court thereby admitted two things:
- that there had been instructions spread largely by the Church to its entire staff to control its believers in their private activities regarding compliance with commercial legislation; and
- that the Church also gave specific guidance to its staff regarding the solicitation of religious donations, so it could not be accused of infringement of the free will of donors, as had happened in the tort cases it had lost.
This last point included full information about the donors and the signing of the needed documents to protect the Church. Obviously the correction department of the Church did an effective job as the court found for fact: “Of the 169 plaintiffs in the 32 civil judgments, only 3 plaintiffs (Judgment No. 31, Victim No. 166; Judgment No. 32, Victim Nos. 168 and 169) were judged to have been damaged by the payment of donations, etc. in 2010 and later, the year following the Compliance Declaration, and to have been subject to tort. In addition, for the three plaintiffs in the above two cases, the total amount of the donations, etc. that were recognized as having been made in 2010 or later out of the total amount granted was 17,611,600 yen, and the latest payment, etc. of donations, etc. based on the act of soliciting donations, etc. that was found to be illegal in the judgment, was made in 2014.”
This also corresponds to the cessation of the deprogramming occurrences. But the court ignored this factor and linked this fact to the 2009 Declaration of Compliance only.
Additionally, the court found: “A similar downward trend is also seen in the number of settlements which are based on the filing of lawsuits.” With regard to out-of-court settlements, i.e. the number of people who made claims for damages by letter regarding the payment of donations, the court stated that: “the number has continued to decline, and since 2019, it has been in the single digits (7 people in 2019 and 2020, 2021 and 2022 were 3 each).” This may seem extraordinary considering the persistent hostile media coverage and constant incitement by the National Network of Lawyers Against Spiritual Sales to file claims.
All the above figures should have been enough to conclude that the Compliance Declaration had been respected. However, in order to mitigate the value of its findings, the court stated that those facts alone were not sufficient and that the Church had not taken “fundamental measures” to prevent any recurrence of tortious acts. It namely blamed the Church for lack of thorough investigation upon receipt of notices for donation-related incidents and lack of expulsion of the soliciting members involved. This criticism is particularly irrelevant in consideration of the results provided in the court’s figures above.
Any occurrence of incident linked to donations was obviously dealt with appropriately and successfully. No expulsion was ordered since, one can infer, there were no recurrences with the same members involved. Instead of recognizing the goodwill of the Church, the court found that the tortious acts committed were of a malicious nature and concluded that “there is a high probability that the same type and same kind of tortious acts as those recognized in the relevant civil judgments” would recur.
As stated before in this series, the court ignored the fact that the solicitation of donations was done in good faith by members who were believers themselves. MEXT filed information on the use of donations from which it is obvious that they were used for maintaining the Church’s institutions, for educational and missionary work worldwide, and humanitarian aid. No money went for personal enrichment, and no money went to Reverend Moon.
The court could not ignore those facts, which were included in the dissolution request, but chose instead to follow a number of biased rulings of tort based on an alleged infringement of free will and undue influence, and decided that there was a malicious intent behind these acts and that would make the damage likely to recur. The court cannot, on the one hand, recognize that the members have a strong faith because they are under undue influence and at the same time find that they have a malicious intent when soliciting donations for their Church.
The court should logically have found that the defendants had acted in good faith. In total contradiction, the court assumed a malicious intent, as the civil courts had ruled in their biased decisions of tort based on “social norms.” In the same way, unable to prove any current damage with the figures given above, the court entered then into a nebulous explanation as to why there would be a hidden damage that has not yet come to light.
The court stated: “It should be said that there is no denying that there are other unexposed damages caused by illegal solicitation of donations, etc., other than those asserted in the above civil judgments, settlements after a lawsuit, and out-of-court settlements.”
By using the argument that “there is no denying,” the court reverses the burden of proof and suggests that the defendant does not deny that there is a possibility of “other unexposed damages.” It is up to the claimant to prove its case.
The court goes further in its assumptions: “the fact [is] that it is difficult to assume that all those who have suffered damage due to illegal solicitation of donations will seek a solution by consulting a lawyer, etc., due to psychological barriers such as interpersonal relationships with surrounding believers, etc.”
And taking into account all those “victims” who have not formulated claims, the court inferred that “although the damage has been on a downward trend, it is still at a scale that cannot be overlooked.” This is actually preconception and pure speculation, which violates all the rules of due process of law and the right to a fair trial.
This understanding is permeated by the concept of mind control that has been found to be unscientific and to have no legal value by western courts of law.
Based on this theory, the thirty-two civil courts, in the judgments that the dissolution order relies on, found an infringement of the free will of donors and ruled the Church liable for tort.
In spite of all the evidence provided by the Church of the strong faith of the believers at the time of their donations, the courts asserted that the donors did not have their free will, as they were under undue influence. The courts granted refund and damages.
Similarly, although the facts involved were very old (between twenty to forty years before), they denied the plea by the defense that they were time-barred (over three years old). The judges refused to apply the statute of limitations in force for civil suits, finding that the “victims” were not aware of being victims until they met with the anti-Unification Church National Network of Lawyers Against Spiritual Sales.
They ruled that the donors were under the undue influence of the Church and made the statute of limitations apply from the day they met these lawyers and were “awakened” by them to file claims. This is an obviously biased and discriminatory application of the law.
These accusations of undue influence against the Church underlie also the new law enacted on December 30, 2023 on the relief of victims. This law organizes help for the victims of a religious corporation under dissolution to file for damages, and surveillance of its assets. It has been designed for the Unification Church as it was the only denomination subjected to dissolution at the date.
For the application of the law, the authorities provided some Guidelines and gave a tailor-made definition of “victim.” Victim has been defined as meaning a person who has or may have a legal right to claim damages. Victims are not limited to victims recognized by the authority when requesting a specific dissolution order, but also victims of the same type of act that was not known at the time of the request.
They also include persons “whose intention to file a compensation request is not yet clear.” This means potential victims who would come forward later, when they are made aware that they are victims. This is done through manipulation of public opinion, in particular through the lobbying done by those “lawyers against spiritual sales” who have been funded by the government to file financial claims. Under the same reasoning, we now have a court of law include potential victims to establish the damage in a decision to dissolve the religious corporation.
Japan has a duty of neutrality in religious matters, under the right to freedom of religion or belief, which it has pledged to the international community to respect. It is actually doing the opposite.
5. Freedom of Religion or Belief ⬆︎
The Tokyo District Court claimed its decision did not violate international and constitutional principles of religious liberty. It was wrong.
The Church had no chance of getting out of its scheduled execution. After the forced de-conversion of its members by the thousands, increasingly demanding requirements have been imposed regarding donations, making them nearly impossible to fulfill, like the non-infringement of free will which is so vague a criterion that the courts are left to decide in a discriminatory manner that it always applies when the Unification Church is concerned.
As a matter of fact, this concept of “free will” has been included in the new law on unjust solicitation of donations enacted on 16 December 2022. No matter what the Church did to comply with the law, the court found a malicious intent in the donation raising from twenty to forty years back, which would allegedly make the recurrence of torts inevitable.
The Church members have been left with their backs to the wall for execution. It is the very propagation of the doctrine, proselytism, which is in reality targeted, in violation of the right to freedom of religion or belief. The court found: “The followers of the interested party were engaged in acts of soliciting donations, etc. as part of the process of preaching the doctrines of the interested party, with the aim of acquiring those followers and having them make donations, etc. for the interested party. The content of such solicitation of donations by the followers of the interested party was closely related to the doctrine of the interested party, and the solicitation of donations itself was considered to be the practice of that doctrine.”
By this statement, the court found that the Church members were faith-motivated and were exercising their right to proselytize the religion and solicit donations to maintain their religious institutions. This is precisely what the right to freedom of manifesting one’s beliefs and practicing one’s religion is all about. The fact that the decision is not only a corporate matter is addressed in the decision itself, when the court suggests that future donation solicitation will unavoidably constitute torts and any new “structures” would be liable to similar decisions of dissolution.
Despite the evidence, the court devotes its final findings to the argument that the dissolution will not hinder the right of followers to practice the religion individually. But freedom of religion entails the right to practice with others and establish religious institutions.
In particular, the right to manifest one’s religion in community with others must be read in light of the right to association under international human rights standards (European Court of Human Rights, “Hasan and Chaush v. Bulgaria,” October 26, 2000, and subsequent constant case law): “Where the organisation of the religious community is at issue, Article 9 of the Convention must be interpreted in the light of Article 11, which safeguards associative life against unjustified State interference. Seen in this perspective, the believers’ right to freedom of religion encompasses the expectation that the community will be allowed to function peacefully, free from arbitrary State intervention. Indeed, the autonomous existence of religious communities is indispensable for pluralism in a democratic society and is thus an issue at the very heart of the protection which Article 9 affords.”
The European Court explained further: “It directly concerns not only the organization of the community as such but also the effective enjoyment of the right to freedom of religion by all its active members. Were the organizational life of the community not protected by Article 9 of the Convention, all other aspects of the individual’s freedom of religion would become vulnerable.”
The United Nations Human Rights Committee, which monitors the compliance of member States with the Covenant, has similar case law (see United Nations Human Rights Committee, “Malakhovsky and Pikul v. Belarus,” 1207/03, July 26, 2005).
This contradicts directly the finding of the Japanese Supreme Court in its March 3 decision: “Moreover, a dissolution order merely results in the loss of corporate status for the religious corporation and does not prohibit or restrict the religious activities of its followers in any way (see the aforementioned Supreme Court decision of January 30, 1996).”
The Supreme Court of Japan ruled in blatant contravention of international human rights standards, which provide that the right of a denomination to exist as a legal entity “directly concerns not only the organisation of the community as such but also the effective enjoyment of the right to freedom of religion by all its active members.”
The only limitations permitted to the right to manifest one’s religion pursuant to Article 18.3 of the Covenant are those prescribed by law and necessary to protect public safety, order, etc., and also proportionate to the aim pursued under international human rights case law.
The decision of dissolution in the present case is not prescribed by law, as previously mentioned, does not protect one of the interests listed in the Treaty, and does not meet the requirements of necessity and proportionality as shown by the analysis of the findings it relies upon. Therefore, the District Court decision—and the Supreme Court decision that paved its way—violate the right to freedom of religion or belief of all the followers of the Unification Church in Japan.
Japan has a long history of not respecting its international human rights commitments. This decision is a typical illustration. It is part of the stated purpose of the Japanese government to eradicate by all means the Unification Church from its religious landscape.
The National Network of Lawyers Against Spiritual Sales is right now calling for new “victims” to sue for damages, using the new laws to plunder the Church assets. In parallel, the State has launched in January last year a re-education plan for the children of Unification Church members in public schools to set them against their parents’ beliefs and ensure that they would not become themselves followers of the faith.
It is an undertaking of religious cleansing of Japan that we are facing, the dissolution order being just the tip of the iceberg.
Source: Bitter Winter: Article 1 – Article 2 – Article 3 – Article 4 – Article 5
