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Prime minister’s order comes amid anger over ruling LDP’s ties to the spiritual sect, which is accused of soliciting massive donations from followers.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida ordered an investigation into the Unification Church on Monday amid a public outcry over the South Korean spiritual sect’s ties with the ruling Liberal Democratic Get together (LDP).
Formally often known as the Household Federation for World Peace and Unification, the church has come beneath heavy scrutiny for the reason that assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on July 8.
Abe’s murderer, Tetsuya Yamagami, stated he killed Japan’s longest-serving prime minister for his assist for the Unification Church. The 41-year-old assailant blames the church for his household’s monetary spoil: his mom, a dedicated follower, had gone bankrupt after donating some 100 million yen ($672,000) to the sect.
The revelations prompted extra kinfolk of members of the church to come back ahead accusing it of forcing ruinous donations, and media consideration on the group’s hyperlinks with the conservative LDP. An inside occasion survey later confirmed practically half the LDP’s 379 nationwide legislators had ties with the church, starting from attending occasions organised by the group to receiving election assist from its volunteers.
Kishida introduced the probe in parliament on Monday with the allegations weighing on his assist. Public backing for his cupboard plummeted to 35 % in a Kyodo information company ballot — its lowest stage since he took workplace final yr.
The prime minister informed legislators that he referred to as for an investigation due to the “massive” numbers of the church’s victims. “The federal government has taken significantly the truth that there are a lot of victims in addition to poverty and damaged households, they usually haven’t been supplied with satisfactory aid,” he stated.
The investigation is being carried out by Japan’s ministry for training, tradition, sports activities, science and know-how.
Schooling Minister Keiko Nagaoka stated she is going to start the probe “instantly”.
The Unification Church, which has about 100,000 lively followers in Japan, has denied any wrongdoing. Campaigners filed a criticism on the United Nations Human Rights Committee in September, claiming the church has turn into a sufferer of “a marketing campaign of intolerance, discrimination and persecution” in Japan.
The criticism stated Japanese media and legal professionals have “twisted” the tragedy of Abe’s killing “right into a weird narrative that makes the alleged murderer right into a sufferer of the Unification Church and blames the church for the assassination”.
It added that church members have since suffered assaults, assaults and demise threats.
With Monday’s probe, Japan’s Kyodo information company stated the Unification Church faces dropping its standing as a spiritual company, depriving it of tax advantages though it might nonetheless be allowed to function within the nation.
Kyodo stated Kishida had been beforehand cautious about ordering a probe into the church’s actions, partly attributable to considerations of violating constitutional provisions for freedom of faith.
The NHK public broadcaster, in the meantime, stated Kishida’s choice to launch an investigation was the primary time the federal government had exercised its “proper to ask questions” beneath the nation’s Non secular Firms Act.
The availability permits the tradition ministry and prefectural governments to query executives of non secular companies suspected of violating legal guidelines.
Solely two spiritual teams in Japan have thus far been ordered dissolved by courts.
One was the Aum Shinrikyo cult that carried out a lethal sarin gasoline assault in Tokyo’s subway system in 1995. The opposite was the Myokakuji temple group, whose clergymen had been discovered responsible of defrauding followers by telling them they had been possessed by evil spirits and charging them for exorcisms.
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