Independent women’s group says it’s facing persecution for Unification Church ties

An independent advocacy organization that runs international outreach programs for women and children from its headquarters in Japan says it is facing persecution for its ties to the Unification Church.

The Women’s Federation for World Peace (WFWP) — a United Nations-recognized nongovernment organization best known for drawing university-age women from around the world to Japan — is suing a left-leaning lawyers group for defamation in Tokyo.

“We … are the victims of an incredibly discriminatory campaign that is unprecedented in a democratic country,” Moriko Hori, who heads the WFWP’s Japan office, said this week as hearings in her organization’s suit against the lawyer group opened in Tokyo.

The suit pits Ms. Hori’s WFWP against the National Network of Lawyers Against Spiritual Sales, a group of Japanese lawyers that has waged a long legal battle against the South Korea-based Unification Church’s operations in Japan.

The case comes amid a wider fight over religious freedom in Japan that currently centers on a push by the Japanese government to strip the tax-exempt religious status of the Unification Church, which has operated in the country since the late 1950s.

The Japan branch of the church, formally known as the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification (FFWPU), has vowed to wage a concerted legal battle in response to what it calls a politically motivated attack by Japanese lawmakers, who filed a request for the disbandment in Tokyo District Court in early October.

The FFWPU says it has faced persecution since former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s assassination in July 2022. The gunman accused of shooting Mr. Abe allegedly was motivated by the former prime minister’s links to the church, which he blamed for bankrupting his family two decades ago.

The two cases now working their way through the Tokyo court mark the latest in a highly publicized wave of scrutiny over the church’s fundraising and recruitment activities.

The request filed this month by Japanese lawmakers asked the Tokyo court to revoke the legal status of the FFWPU, citing an investigation by Japan’s Education Ministry concluded the group systematically manipulated its followers into donating money, sowing fear and harming their families.

Church officials have acknowledged soliciting excessive donations in the past, but say the problem was addressed after a series of highly publicized cases and mitigated by reforms more than a decade ago. An FFWPU statement this month said the request by the government of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida to disband the church “will be a stain on Japan’s constitutional history.”

If the FFWPU’s status is revoked, it would be the first-ever such revocation under civil law in Japan.

The church was founded in South Korea in 1954 by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, a fierce proponent of religious freedom. The now-global spiritual movement and an affiliated commercial empire includes hundreds of ventures around the world, including the parent company for The Washington Times, founded in 1982.

The Unification Church was officially recognized as a religion in Japan in the 1960s and church officials have pushed back the government’s plans, saying in a recent statement that it was “extremely regrettable that the Japanese government made such an important decision based on biased information from a left-wing lawyer group established with the purpose of destroying” the church’s Japan branch.

The WFWP’s lawsuit is demanding $230,000 in damages from the lawyer group, claiming it has engaged in a deliberate campaign to defame the women’s advocacy organization and mischaracterize its relations with the Unification Church. The suit specifically claims the lawyer group placed pressure on local governments to bar the WFWP from venues around the country for its annual Japanese speech contest for foreign students in recent months.

According to Japan’s Mainichi newspaper, a statement by the lawyer group in June described the WFWP as an organization “serving to gather people and collect money for the former Unification Church while masquerading as a volunteer organization.”

Ms. Hori has sharply rejected that characterization: “I’ve been doing international volunteer work for over 30 years. I feel resentful,” she said at a July press conference announcing the WFWP’s lawsuit.

In a new statement this week, Ms. Hori said her organization was founded “not to proselytize for the former Unification Church, but to support women and children internationally through humanitarian aid, charity work, and educational activities,” she said. “Those who participate in the activities of the International Federation of Women do not have their personal beliefs or beliefs questioned.”

She noted similar U.N.-approved organizations have a religious origin, including the International Red Cross and the Salvation Army.

The Washington Times was unable to reach the National Network of Lawyers Against Spiritual Sales for comment, but the group’s activities have drawn scrutiny from international religious freedom advocates over the past year.

The Paris-based Coordination of Associations and Individuals for Freedom of Conscience in a 2002 statement to the U.N. Human Rights Committee said that the lawyers’ group has spurred “hate campaigns” against the Unification Church and “occasionally targeted other religious movements as well.”