Controversy erupts after Shinzo Abe’s murderer says he killed the previous chief over his help for a ‘predatory South Korean non secular cult’.
Shinzo Abe was not his murderer’s most popular goal.
Investigators say Tetsuya Yamagami, who fatally shot Japan’s longest-serving prime minister on July 8, had initially wished to kill the chief of the Unification Church — a South-Korean non secular sect that the 41-year-old blames for his household’s monetary break. However the COVID-19 pandemic received in the way in which.
Hak Ja Han Moon, who has led the church for the reason that 2012 loss of life of its founder — her husband Solar Myung Moon — had stopped coming to Japan following pandemic-related border closures.
In a letter Yamagami despatched to a blogger a day earlier than taking pictures Abe with a hand-crafted gun, he wrote that it was “unattainable” to kill Hak Ja Han Moon. And though Abe was “not my unique enemy”, the 67-year-old politician was “one of the crucial influential sympathisers” of the Unification Church, he wrote. “I can now not afford to consider the political implications and penalties that Abe’s loss of life will deliver,” he added.
The brazen killing within the metropolis of Nara, as Abe was delivering a marketing campaign speech, shocked Japan, a nation the place political violence and gun crimes are extraordinarily uncommon. Prime Minister Fumio Kishida shortly declared that he would maintain a state funeral for Abe whereas the Japanese public handed his ruling Liberal Democratic Social gathering (LDP) a sweeping victory in an higher home election held simply days after the assassination.
However the grief shortly gave technique to anger amid rising media scrutiny of the church’s intensive ties with Abe and the LDP, and alleged abuses, together with claims of pressured donations. Kishida has, in the meantime, seen his approval scores plunge from 63 % on the time of Abe’s assassination to about 29 % in mid-September, elevating questions over the prime minister’s political future.
“The Unification Church just isn't a lot considered a non secular organisation, however moderately as a predatory cult in Japan,” stated Koichi Nakano, professor of political science on the Sophia College in Tokyo. The LDP has “outraged” the Japanese folks simply as if “ties with a infamous prison organisation had been revealed,” stated Nakano.
Church or cult?
Formally often called Household Federation for World Peace and Reunification and disparagingly referred to as “the Moonies”, Solar Myung Moon based the Unification Church in South Korea in 1954. The self-proclaimed messiah was a staunch anti-Communist who advocated conservative family-oriented beliefs. Famously, he oversaw mass weddings at which he had matched 1000's of couples, generally by pairing pictures of people that had by no means met earlier than.
Consultants say the church’s right-wing beliefs helped it broaden abroad through the Chilly Conflict.
Moon grew to become good mates with Nobusuke Kishi, who served as Japan’s prime minister from 1957 to 1960 and was Abe’s grandfather. It was Kishi who helped discovered the church’s political arm, the Worldwide Federation for Victory Over Communism in Japan in 1968, in accordance with Japanese media. After gaining a foothold in Japan, the church handled its followers there like an “financial military”, a former senior member informed the Reuters information company, elevating cash by amassing donations and promoting “non secular items” equivalent to costly ginseng tea or miniature stone pagodas.
Within the case of Yamagami, Abe’s killer, kinfolk say his mom, a religious follower, donated some 100 million yen ($692,000) to the church, a big a part of which got here from a life insurance coverage cost from his father’s loss of life by suicide. The donations bankrupted the household and Yamagami, described by his uncle as “extraordinarily sensible” and “hardworking”, needed to abandon plans to go to varsity.
A bunch of attorneys representing victims of the church’s “non secular gross sales” in Japan stated the non secular group has been linked to some 30,000 complaints involving losses of 123.7 billion yen ($856m) since 1987 and that the church has used the funds raised in Japan to construct and seed a multi-billion greenback enterprise empire spanning the globe.
In line with Britain’s Monetary Occasions, Moon based a conglomerate referred to as Tongil Group in South Korea in 1963, and its associates now function ski and golf resorts, a defence firm, a chemical compounds group, a automotive elements enterprise and a newspaper. In the US, the church’s enterprise pursuits embody the conservative Washington Occasions newspaper, the New Yorker Resort in New York, the True World Meals seafood wholesaler and an unlimited property portfolio, it stated.
Regardless of the complaints over its fundraising practices in Japan, the church continued to seek out favour amongst LDP politicians, with whom it shared conservative values, together with opposition to LGBTQ rights.
Investigators say it was a video message that Abe had despatched final 12 months to an occasion hosted by a Unification Church-affiliated group, the Common Peace Federation (UPF), and attended by Hak Ja Han Moon that prompted his killer to contemplate switching his targets. Within the message to the UPF, Abe had praised Hak Ja Han Moon and thanked the group for its “focus and emphasis on household values”.
Japanese media, in the meantime, have alleged that the church, which now has about 100,000 lively followers in Japan, has directed its members to assist elect LDP candidates. A former follower informed the Asahi Shimbun newspaper that she had volunteered in campaigns to assist elect Abe ally Koichi Haguida with the intention to “save” Japan. 5 former followers additionally informed Reuters that church officers had instructed them to vote for LDP candidates who opposed homosexual rights.
“The nexus of right-wing politicians and a right-wing Church that each oppose gender rights, LGBTQ rights and wish to flip again the arms of historical past on social developments involving the household have sparked anger,” stated Jeffrey Kingston, professor of historical past and Asian research at Temple College in Japan. “Their conservative dogma doesn't take pleasure in public help.”
‘No surprising hyperlinks’
In a bid to deal with the rising outcry, Kishida reshuffled his cupboard, ordered LDP legislators to sever ties with the church and introduced a brand new programme to assist these experiencing bother with the group. This contains providing authorized support for individuals who are searching for the return of their donations.
The LDP additionally carried out an inside survey that discovered almost half of its 379 nationwide legislators had ties to the church. It stated some 96 of the legislators reported attending occasions organised by the church or its associates whereas 29 stated they'd accepted donations from the group. An extra 17 stated they'd acquired election help from church followers who volunteered of their campaigns.
Kingston stated a radical investigation of the allegations of the church’s actions in Japan was mandatory.
“Its intensive and longstanding political position has been saved obscure till the assassination,” he stated. “It's within the public curiosity to totally vet the organisation and its position in politics and whether or not it's in compliance with rules protecting non secular organisations.”
The church has denied supporting any explicit political occasion and stated it doesn't give political steering to its members. It did say, nonetheless, that its political arm, the UPF, has courted Japanese legislators and most of them had been from the LDP due to shared values.
A spokesman for UPF, Kajikuri Masayoshi, additionally informed NHK he didn't perceive the furore over ties between the 2 teams. “Our relationship is simply regular. Normally, they despatched congratulatory telegrams or did interviews with our magazines. I feel there have been no authorized or moral issues,” he stated in late August.
With Japan holding a state funeral for Abe on Tuesday, some analysts stated they count on the outcry to blow over.
Masaki Nakamasa, professor of philosophy at Kanazawa College, stated he believed the hyperlinks between the Unification Church and the LDP had been “not so sturdy”.
Attending church conferences with the intention to acquire election volunteers doesn't make the legislators believers, stated Nakamasa, who was previously a member of the church. “Within the media, it has been stated that the Unification Church has been influencing the insurance policies of the LDP, however I feel that’s placing the cart earlier than the horse,” he stated, stressing: “It isn't the Unification Church that has turned [the LDP legislators] conservative.”
Apart from, Nakamasa stated, it might be “actually onerous to show conservative Japanese politicians into devoted Moonies”.
“After the memorial service for Abe, the media and the online opinion will lose curiosity, as a result of there are not any actual surprising hyperlinks between Abe and the Unification Church,” he added.
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