The nation’s training ministry requested the dissolution of the spiritual group for the hurt it’s alleged to have prompted to its followers and their households.
A court docket in Tokyo has ordered the Unification church in Japan to disband, following a request by the nation’s authorities.
The church, which is formally referred to as the Household Federation for World Peace and Unification, got here underneath elevated scrutiny within the aftermath of the 2022 assassination of the previous Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
The alleged murderer claims the church bankrupted his mom, and blamed Abe for his social gathering’s affiliation with it.
Japan’s training ministry sought the church’s dissolution in 2023, claiming that it had harmed its followers and their households via manipulative fundraising and recruitment ways.
As a part of its request, the federal government division submitted 5,000 paperwork and items of proof to court docket, primarily based on interviews with greater than 170 individuals.
In its ruling on the matter, the Tokyo District Courtroom introduced on Tuesday that it was revoking the authorized standing of the South Korea-based spiritual sect, whose followers are informally referred to as Moonies. This identify derives from that of the church’s founder, the and self-proclaimed messiah Solar Myung Moon.
Until the group manages to efficiently attraction the choice, it’ll lose its tax-exempt privilege and should liquidate its belongings in Japan.
The church, which has indicated that it’s contemplating an attraction, referred to as Tuesday’s resolution “completely unacceptable”, claiming the court docket had given “a unsuitable authorized interpretation”.
That is the primary time a spiritual group in Japan has been topic to a revocation order underneath the nation’s civil code.
The Unification church, which was based in Seoul in 1954, obtained authorized standing in Japan within the Nineteen Sixties, a transfer stated to have been supported by Abe’s grandfather, the previous Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi.
Following Abe’s assassination at a marketing campaign rally, a highlight was positioned on the church’s ties to the ruling Liberal Democratic Celebration.
A cupboard reshuffle in 2022 by the then Prime Minister Fumio Kishida eliminated seven officers with hyperlinks to the church, earlier than the Economic system Minister Daishiro Yamagiwa resigned over his ties to the sect.
