Japan urged to step up, lead the way on religious freedom in the Indo-Pacific

TOKYO — Freedom of religion is the “orphaned” human right, as Western democracies instead furiously debate gender rights, freedom of expression and freedom of assembly.

That was a core message at the International Religious Freedom Summit Asia, held last month in Japan’s capital city.

“We are now at a time when democratic backsliding and aggression is becoming more widespread, and people face persecution due to their religious beliefs,” Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te told the summit in a video address. “We must reaffirm our commitment to freedom and dignity.”

Despite deep political polarization in the U.S., religious freedom brings convergence.

“It is deeply telling that you have two different political parties and thought processes but each believes deeply in the criticality of international religious freedoms,” said former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. “It is not partisan in the U.S. It is something that is intrinsic to human dignity.”

“We are the only creatures that are hard-wired to ask the deepest questions: ‘Who am I?’ ‘Why am I here?’ ‘What is the purpose of my life?’ said summit co-chair Katrina Lantos Swett. “There is a voluminous amount of research showing that countries that protect freedom of religion, conscience and belief get the other stuff right — democracy, pluralism. They are less likely to be incubators of social tension, and women have a higher socioeconomic status.”

Freedom of worship “is a human right that authoritarian regimes despise. They hate it, as it is generally people of faith that will stand up,” said Ms. Swett’s co-chair, former Sen. Sam Brownback, who also served as the U.S. ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom.

“It is a cornerstone human right and can build freedom of assembly and speech if you get this right, and you can plug into an army,” he said.

If religions practiced across political borders unite under the banner of freedom of belief, he said, they would obviate the feared “clash of civilizations” and wield massive clout.

“Eighty percent of the world proclaims a faith of some type,” Mr. Brownback said. “You have got an army behind you that says, ‘I am behind you on that.’”

Attendees at the summit hailed from multiple religions, including Buddhism, Christianity, Islam and Shintoism. Numerous human rights organizations were also represented.

The Indo-Pacific is experiencing widespread state assaults on religious minorities: Rohingya Muslims, Tibetan Buddhists, underground North Korean Christians and Uyghur Muslims, to name a few.

Ms. Swett told the crowd that Japan, the summit’s host nation, can “play a critical role in advancing the protection” of religious freedom.

Japan, an economic powerhouse, has been largely pacifist since the end of World War II. As regional threats have risen over the past decade, it has quietly beefed up its armed forces and is forging closer ties with nearby democracies, including Australia, the Philippines and South Korea.

“Japan is an incredibly important partner — the largest [East] Asian democracy, so much creativity. It has much economic power and could have the same moral power,” said Nathan Sales, former ambassador-at-large and counterterrorism coordinator at the State Department and now a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.

“Japan policymakers will come to understand that this is ultimately good for Japan. The movement needs Japan’s vision and leadership, but Japan also benefits,” Mr. Sales said.

Even so, just one Japanese parliamentarian attended the summit, held in a central Tokyo hotel. Japanese media presence was minimal.

Some analysts are not convinced that the country is willing to be vocal on human rights.

Although attendees praised Japan for its entrenched democratic credentials, the elephant in the room was Tokyo’s political and media assault on the Unification Church.

Religious scapegoat?

What began with a tiny church founded in South Korea in the 1950s has evolved over decades into a global spiritual movement and affiliated commercial empire comprising hundreds of ventures, including The Washington Times.

It has a strong anti-communist stance, and Japanese members have a history of assisting the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, a conservative machine, with electioneering.

Ties between the LDP and the church were torn apart in 2022 when Shinzo Abe, Japan’s longest-serving postwar prime minister and a key LDP figure, was assassinated.

His killer was angered by Abe’s links to the church. He said his mother’s substantial monetary donations to the church led her to bankruptcy. What is underreported is that his mother, still a church member, and other family members signed a statement absolving the church of any responsibility and half her donations were returned.

Regardless, the revelation of connections between the church’s anti-communist affiliates and the LDP, dating to 1978, generated shock waves.

Though ties between Japanese politics and religions are not unusual. The LDP’s coalition partner in the Diet is Komeito, a Buddhist party. Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, in damage-control mode, requires party members to sever ties with the church.

The left wing and the media piled on, and the church’s allies evaporated. Just one man in Japan’s Diet is speaking up.

“Strong criticism has passed against [the church] ever since the assassination,” said Satoshi Hamada, a member of the Diet’s upper house. “However, according to the research I conducted, the [church] was not really the main cause of the incident.”

Calling the onslaught “unfair,” he added, “There are 700 parliamentarians in Japan, but only one speaks about this issue: me.”

Pending appeal processes, the church, which has broken no law, faces national dissolution. That means revocation of its legal status and tax exemptions and the confiscation of all property and assets, financial or otherwise.

It looks set to be the third such organization to suffer such sanctions. The first two were Aum (Shinrikyo) Supreme Truth, which killed dozens of people by releasing nerve gas in a subway in 1995, and Myokaku-ji Temple, which defrauded people by charging for exorcisms.

In a meeting after the summit, Japanese church members, who number about 100,000 regular servicegoers and 600,000 believers, spoke of the crosses they bear.

Churches have been defaced with hate speech, and members’ cars and homes have been vandalized. Some believers have been physically threatened.

Children of believers have been bullied at school to the point where some have turned against religion. Workers have been ostracized by colleagues.

The Women’s Federation for World Peace, a church-linked nongovernmental organization that builds schools across developing Africa, has been demonized. An honor from the Japanese Foreign Ministry has been revoked, and its brand has been removed from schools it helped build.

Abuses date back years. One church was attacked by a mob, and a complaint filed with the United Nations Human Rights Committee in 2022 reported that 4,300 members of the church had been kidnapped and held against their will since the 1980s to break their faith.

Police have declined to intervene in these intrafamily cases.

Only two of hundreds of lawsuits were successful. In one filed in 2015, the Supreme Court of Japan ruled in favor of Toru Goto, who sued deprogrammers who confined him for 12 years and five months. After that decision, the faith-breaking deprogrammings stopped.

The practice was found to be Illegal in the U.S. in 1997, and many deprogrammers were imprisoned for kidnapping.

Summit speakers agreed that the church has been scapegoated by politicians and demonized by the media.

“It is lamentable that in the National Diet, the source of democratic power, even house members, have turned a blind eye to the social eradication of certain new religions for fear of being associated with a particular cult,” said the Rev. Yoshinobu Miyake, chair of the board of the International Shinto Studies Association. “Mass media played the role of justice.”

Mr. Pompeo asked Tokyo to step back from the dissolution, which would have shuttered churches and prevented pastors from preaching.

“It would be a mistake and detrimental to the country to dissolve any church or any practicing faith … though if someone breaks the law, I get it,” he said. “This, in my judgment, would be improper. … I pray the leadership will review this.”