By RT | 21.01.2010 | 10:01 ET in Europe

Institute on Religion and Public Policy condemns kidnappings

The Institute on Religion and Public Policy calls upon the government of Japan to cease its long-term and persistent use of kidnapping and forced confinement to compel its citizens to deny and change their religious beliefs.

It has been reported that just in the Unification Church alone, more than 4,000 members have been victimized to date (since 1966). Those who have managed to escape often did so at great personal risk. Some even died in this attempt.

The approximate 1,300 who returned to their religious communities reported horrific accounts of long-term incarceration, mental and physical abuse and psychological manipulation designed to force them to recant their faith. Currently at least four Unification Church members remain missing and are suspected to be held against their will.

One example of Japan’s religious persecution is the case of Mr. Toru Goto, who was confined for over 12 years against his will in Tokyo and finally gained his freedom in 2008. Mr. Goto was not allowed to leave the illegal private prison, even to exercise, and was deprived of food by his captors, necessitating a prolonged hospital stay when he was finally released.

The perpetrators of this crime are known to the police, and yet on December 9, 2009 prosecutors refused to hear the case against them. Their claim of “insufficient evidence” is a travesty of justice and allows those responsible to continue their activities with impunity. Such inaction by the government will almost certainly result in more such kidnappings.

These practices are clearly in violation of international human rights instruments guaranteeing the right to freedom of religion and belief and freedom of movement. Japan is bound to uphold these standards as a member of the international community. Moreover, false imprisonment is a crime in Japan under Article 220 of the Japanese Penal Code. These gross human rights violations threaten to stain Japan’s otherwise exemplary role in promoting and defending fundamental rights around the world.

The Institute on Religion and Public Policy condemns kidnappings strongly urges the immediate and forceful intervention of Japan’s Government, the Diet, prosecutors, police, human rights organizations, and religious leaders to put an end to kidnapping and forced religious conversion in Japan.

By courtesy of The Sikh Times, Britain’s First English Punjabi Daily News Website

13 Responses to Institute on Religion and Public Policy condemns kidnappings

Christopher D Osborn Reply

January 21, 2010 at 11:46

I am very glad that the Baltic Review and The Sikhe Times have spoken out on this, but it will take even more awareness than this. This information needs to spread throughout the world so that that Japanese government can properly feel ashamed for their blatant inaction!
mm Reply

January 21, 2010 at 23:50

No one supports people being held against their will.

But if you track back the Institute on Religion and Public Policy you find it is Mr. Grieboski organization and he is an apologist for Sun Myung Moon.

The Unification Church continues to have followers arrested in Japan for swindling the people of Japan. The UC has been found guilty by Japan’s highest courts for scamming hundreds of millions, likely billions, of dollars from its citizens. This swindling has been perpetrated in Japan by the UC for decades. They admit it is Japan that provides the cash for Moon’s world wide political efforts including funding the Washington Times.

The new head of the UC, Hyung Jin Moon, in a recent talk boasted that one rich Japanese family sold everything they had, cashed in their children’s college fund and their insurance policies and gave it all to Moon’s movement. Hyung Jin Jin held this up as an example of something good. Just disgusting.

The UC also admits that this “kidnapping” problem has slowed to a trickle in the last 15 years. UPI, which the UC owns, said there are now only about a dozen instances a year now. Keep in mind that these people doing the “kidnapping” are facing the horror of having one of their loved ones conned out of their lives by the UC’s famous deceptive recruiting practices.

This is simply the UC using this issue as a way to deflect criticism of their swindling the people of Japan. They are trying divert attention from the continued arrests of their members for scamming widows out a fortunes.

Read this for how the UC scams widows in Japan:
http://tinyurl.com/39ejt

this is about a 70 year old widow being paid over 2 million dollars by the UC as retribution for scamming her:
http://www.rickross.com/reference/unif/unif325.html

This is a link to the swindling totals through 2008. The total is over a billion dollars and said to reflect only a fraction of the money swindled from the citizens of Japan by the UC.

http://www1k.mesh.ne.jp/reikan/japanese/sitte/madoguti.htm
Steve Reply

January 22, 2010 at 18:30

Hi mm. I’m glad to hear that kidnappings in the name of religion are in decline. Still they were always fairly minor compared to other religious persecution going on in the world. BTW the idea of giving all one’s worldly goods to the church goes back to Jesus himself. It wasn’t started by the Moonies.
mm Reply

January 22, 2010 at 22:43

“BTW the idea of giving all one’s worldly goods to the church goes back to Jesus himself. It wasn’t started by the Moonies.”

And when done with a backdrop of lying and scamming widows and all the arrests of UC members involved with the lying and swindling, that is just like Jesus too, eh?

Amazing what people are capable of using as comparisons when rationalizing wrongdoing.
Steve Reply

January 23, 2010 at 05:42

No. But the Moonies’ wrongdoings don’t justify violence by the anti-cult group either.
mm Reply

January 26, 2010 at 10:24

“No. But the Moonies’ wrongdoings don’t justify violence by the anti-cult group either.”

No one is using UC’s swindling as a justification to hold anyone against their will. That’s nonsense.

You are conflating them not me. My point is that the Moon children are orchestrating as a “problem” now yet it has become very rare – and they know it – they are trying to change the subject – at least in their follower’s minds – to get their followers and people to equate the two. Like – “Yes, we conned widows out of fortunes but oh, btw, we had people try to save their family members from our control by abducting them.”

It is the UC that is trying to conflate the two imo, so they can divert attention from their swindling. I heard Moon’s son Kook Jin talk after he went to Japan and looked into what the UC was being charged with there. Reporting to the UC members, he went from saying that, yes it looked bad for the UC in Japan after all these arrests. He started out as if he was going to apologize but NO – in mid sentence he changed the subject and started in how he decided the real problem in Japan was the UC being persecuted. He plainly meant to tell the members “Yes, we have been swindling the Japanese for decades and the law is closing in on us but look over here, we were abused.”

Since then you never hear a word about making amends for the billions the UC has swindled from the Japanese. Instead it is the Mr. Goto road show.

The Moon kids are now mad at a problem they know is not remotely taking place like it was even 15 years ago. But they obviously saw the need to change the subject and trot out Moon’s other front organizations to make it an issue. I understand In Jin is even revving up Moon’s ACLC ministers to smear Japan and take the Moon members off the scent of their disgusting swindling activities in Japan. For decades the members have been told how great and successful their “messiah” is. In fact he made a lot of his cash swindling widows in Japan while his businesses were being manned by free or low cast member labor. Don’t tell me Moon doesn’t know what is going on in Japan. It’s been going on for decades and you and I both know he may be old now but he had his finger in every dime the organization ever used or acquired the last 50 years.

So on the contrary, it is the UC that is trying to claim the two are related, that’s my point. Funny how you spun the exact opposite meaning. Are you a follower?
Original Self Reply

January 28, 2010 at 15:17

There is NO EXCUSE for kidnapping. There is NO EXCUSE for holding people in confinement for 12+ years, for even raping women repeatedly while being kidnapped, for even inducing the suicides of three people whose only “crime” was to be a member of the Unification Church, an organization that is recognized as a legal and legitimate religious organization in 143 countries in the world. There is NO EXCUSE for raping women repeatedly to shame them into recanting their faith. There is NO EXCUSE for the hateful violence and denial of fundamental human rights that these kidnappers and their supporters — at least one who is commenting in this blog, even — have brought upon people whose only “wrong-doing” is believing that True Father Sun Myung Moon is the second advent of the messiah. God has sent True Father Moon to lead us out of all the hatred and bigotry that these evil-doing kidnappers have been doing in Japan. As at the time of Jesus the hate-mongers are out in force, but this time they shall not prevail. This time God wins and the evil-doers lose. There is NO EXCUSE, and NO DEFENSE for the kidnappings, the illegal imprisonment, the attempted faith-breaking, the rapes, the tortures, the violent harassment of people seeking their own freedom to worship as their conscience dictates. Period.
mm Reply

February 9, 2010 at 21:54

What portion of responsibility do you place on the UC for the lying, deceptive and manipulative recruiting tactics they deploy around the world which led to this in the first place?

The UC – as all members know – is rightfully famous for its deceptive recruiting practices. We know the UC threatens these victims telling them if they do not turn over their assets to Moon then their loved ones will suffer in hell.

Read about some the repulsive behavior of this “religion” in Japan.
http://tinyurl.com/d2v3n

In the article, from over a decade ago, the UC spokesperson acknowledges that when the UC fleeced one widow out of everything she had that was “excessive.” Of course this was only being acknowledged as the result of a lawsuit and the need to spin for the press, it was not a voluntary admission. Now note that just this year Hyung Jin, the new “leader” of the UC, held up an example one family handing over everything they had, including their kids college fund, to the UC as something good. He says this family represented support for the uC that should be envied and looked up to by other members. This is your new leader? It appears the Moon kids are carrying on the family tradition of rationalizing any wrongdoing.

The swindling claims now top a billion dollars in Japan.

No one supports people being held against their will but why doesn’t the UC acknowledge they were the ones who started this ball rolling in the first place when they swindled people our of their lives with their lying and manipulative and eventually threatening recruiting practices?

After decades and decades of this swindling and conning the people of Japan, preying on their culture, why is there no outcry from the members of the UC to demand that their organization stop deceptive recruiting and swindling widows?
It will never change the fact that the organization was built on deception, manipulation and swindled cash but it would be a good start.

The UC has selective outrage that further damns their credibility if it could be damned any further.

Again, even the Moon owned UPI admits that there are only a few of these situations a year. Very few. Surprisingly few considering the situation the UC puts the family vicitms of their practices.

The UC is simply hyping this to cover for their disgusting actions in Japan.
Offended UC Memeber Reply

February 12, 2010 at 01:44

okay. I’m highly offended by this. Since when has the UC used deceptive recruiting tactics? I recruited myself because it makes me happy. The only example that you’ve given of widows being swindled is the account of Mrs. Atsuko Nakajima. And If someone is that easily convinced to buy a painting than apparently they must either A) be really deep in morning or B) be really into art. And no one asked that specific family to give up everything, they did it on their own. And as with every religion there are always a few scamming preachers that will swindle thousands out of their congregation. but this is certainly not the fault of true father or his immediate family, or the majority of the UC. And it is a big deal when the Japanese government will excuse the kidnapping as merely a family matter and not do a damned thing about it. REV. In Jin moon recently went before the Japanese diet and they told her that they won’t be able to do anything about these kidnappings considering they’re conducted by the families themselves.
Offended UC Memeber Reply

February 12, 2010 at 01:45

sorry, I mean two widows out of over 2 million members.
Steve Reply

February 16, 2010 at 08:33

Even then it is not a crime to ask someone to donate money to a church, even if in some cases it may be ethically or morally wrong. On the other hand, kidnapping, rape, and murder (as practiced by professional deprogramers, are always wrong.
mm Reply

March 3, 2010 at 23:32

Steve, judging by how you are acting like you don’t know details of the swindling, you must be the Steve from the ARU board. If so, you have been around enough to know that this statement is grossly misleading.

“not a crime to ask someone to donate money to a church”

The people swindled, the tens of thousands of them not one or two, and the many who are winning these cases in the Japanese courts, were not “asked” to “donate” and you know it. They were systematically manipulated and deceived. Worse, the Moon org used its “ideology” – the claim that it controls what goes on in the “spiritworld” to threaten these victims. The victims are told that if they do not turn over their assets then their lives and their children’s lives will suffer if they do not pay. But most importantly, they are told their deceased loved ones will suffer in the afterlife if they did not “donate.” This is done after a lot of manipulation and deception. I have seen the Japanese news reports that show UC leaders demanding their victims sign over everything they have to Moon’s swindling organization. It isn’t pretty and it makes Hyung Jin boasting about a new member in Japan signing everything over the group even more disgusting.

This “religion” says that Japan is supposed to supply Moon with the money to con the world since it is the “Eve” nation. How many religions spot a culture that they can prey upon for billions and then makes it “religious” dogma to do so? Sick stuff.

Read part two here about how these scams worked – these people were not “asked” for “donations.”

http://tinyurl.com/39ejt

This is a link to the swindling totals through 2008. The total number of claims is OVER 30,000 – not one or two. The total now claimed is over a billion US dollars and said to reflect less than one tenth of the real damages to the citizens of Japan who, as you know, are not known for filing frivolous lawsuits as these suits plainly are not.
http://www1k.mesh.ne.jp/reikan/japanese/sitte/madoguti.htm

This has gone on for decades. Last year when there were more UC members arrested the head of the UC in Japan resigned to try to take some of the heat off. Do you think he would have resigned if this was just a couple “zealous” members running these cons? Do you honestly think Moon and his brain trust don’t know exactly how they made billions of dollars over decades?
I am afraid the next time this subject comes up you will act like you didn’t know any of this.