2022/9/11
TO: HUMAN RIGHTS COMMITTEEJAPANURGENT JOINT NGO REPORTSHOOTING AGAINST FORMER PRIME MINISTER ABEAND DAMAGES CAUSED BY THE WORLD CHRISTIANASSOCIATION FOR THE UNIFICATION OF GOD AND
SPIRIT (FORMERLY THE UNIFICATION CHURCH, NOW
THE FAMILY ASSOCIATION FOR WORLD PEACE AND
UNIFICATION)

1This report is a product of a collaborative effort by the following civicorganizations:

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Women's Active Museum on War and Peace2

Support Group for the Case of Itabashi High School Graduation Ceremony and“Freedom of Expression”

3

Lawyers’ Association Against the Conspiracy Law4People's Association against Criminalization of Conspiracy

5Japan NGO Action Network for Civic Space (NANCiS)

6

The Organization to Support the Lawsuits for Freedom of Education in Tokyo

7Action network against the land survey law

8Society for Abolishing the Family Registration System and Discriminations
against Children Born out of Wedlock (AFRDC)

9Consumers Union of Japan

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Group of Protesters Against the Secrets Law and the Anti Conspiracy Law inAichi, Japan

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League of Lawyers Against the State Secret Act

12Media Research Institute13

Lawyers' Network Against a Digital Surveillance Society

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Human Rights in Japan project2Recommendations
・ The former Unification Church's illegal acts of evangelism andextortion of donations, in which it conceals its true identity, infringe on
the freedom of the subject of its recruitment to choose theirfaith(Articles 18 of the Covenant), and violate not only the property
rights of its followers, but also their personal rights (Articles 6 and 7 ofthe Covenant) and family rights (Articles 17 and 23 of the Covenant).
・In response, the government should conduct appropriate criminal
investigations and administrative investigations to properly deter
their illegal activities and protect the freedoms and rights that have beenviolated(Articles 2 of the Covenant).

Reasons for Seeking Recommendations
1 Shooting of former Prime Minister Abe
On July 8, 2022, at approximately 11:31 a.m., former Prime Minister Shinzo
Abe, a member of the House of Representatives, was shot and killed near
Yamato Saidaiji Station in Nara City. The suspect, Tetsuya Yamagami ("Mr.
Yamagami"), who was arrested on the spot, explained his motive for theshooting. He claims that his mother was a member of the World Christian
Association for the Unification of God and Spirit (formerly Unification
Church, currently the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification.
Abbreviated as "Family Federation") and his family was destroyed by theformer Unification Church, and Mr. Abe was a strong supporter of theorganization.

32 Mr. Yamagami's Family was Destroyed by the Former Unification
Church's Illegal Extortion of Donations
Mr. Yamagami was born in Nara City in September 1980. He was 41 years
old at the time of the incident and had an older brother and younger sister.
According to his uncle, his father, a graduate of Kyoto University's Facultyof Engineering who ran a construction company and whose family waswealthy, committed suicide in 1984 when he was four years old.
At the same time, his older brother was diagnosed with pediatric cancer.
According to his uncle, these events led his mother to join the former
Unification Church.
According to his uncle, his mother had also lost her brother in a car accident,
and was additionally impacted by the death of her own mother in 1982. His
uncle states that Mr. Yamagami’s mother joined the church in 1991,
according to what she told him.
In contrast, the former Unification Church admits that she became an active
member around 1998. His uncle supported Mr. Yamagami and his family
from 1984, when his father committed suicide, until about 2020. His motherhad sold two residential lots and her own home in Nara City by 1999, anddonated approximately 100 million yen, including 50 million yen of her
husband's (Mr. Yamagami’s father's) life insurance.
In March 1999, he graduated from a prefectural high school in Nara
Prefecture, but in 2002, his mother went bankrupt because of the 100million-yen donation. Mr. Yamagami was unable to attend college andjoined the Maritime Self-Defense Force in August 2002. He attemptedsuicide in 2005 while serving in the MSDF. He explained that his plan wasto give his own death benefits to his brother and sister, whose lives were
impoverished by their mother’s donations to the former Unification Church.

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In October 2020, he registered with a temporary staffing agency in Osaka
Prefecture, and began working as a temporary worker at a factory in Kyoto
Prefecture from that month. He was unemployed at the time of the incident.

3 Motive for the murder of Former Prime Minister Abe was a grudge
against the former Unification Church.
According to media reports, in questioning after the incident, Yamagami
stated that "his mother joined the former Unification Church and wentbankrupt from transferring a large amount of money, which was the root
cause of everything that followed," and that his family life had been ruined
and he felt he absolutely had to make them (the former Unification Church)pay.
He said that in October 2019, when Tsuruko Han, wife of former Unification
Church founder Moon Sun Myung and now president of the church, visited
Japan, he went to the Aichi International Exhibition Hall with a Molotov
cocktail, but "only church members were allowed inside the hall, so I
couldn’t do anything."
He explained that he thought the source of all evil was President Han, butsince Abe was the grandson of former Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi, who
was responsible for bringing President Han to Japan, he thought that Abe
was to blame for spreading the Unification Church in Japan.
On September 12, 2021, at the "Hope Forward Convention," a rally held ata Korean venue and online, hosted by the former Unification Churchaffiliated Union for Peace in the Universe (UPF), former Prime Minister Abe
stated in a recorded message, "I would like to pay my respects to President
Tsuruko Han and all others who have worked with UPF to resolve conflicts
around the world to this day, especially for peaceful reunification of the5

Korean Peninsula. I also highly appreciate the emphasis on the value of thefamily in the UPF's vision for peace.
Mr. Yamagami stated that he saw this video around spring of this year andwas convinced that there was a connection between Abe and the organizationand that it was imperative that he get rid of him.
The statements he reportedly made to investigators are consistent with theposts he allegedly made on Twitter.

4 Illegal collection of donations by former Unification Church has been
confirmed through numerous civil and criminal verdicts.
Since the 1980s, the former Unification Church has reportedly collected
exorbitant amounts of donations from its congregation by means of so-calledspiritual sales, and using the them to fund political and other activities.
The methods used in so-called spiritual sales consist of explaining themisfortunes of believers as being caused by their heritage, saying, "If youbuy this product, you will be protected from your ancestral causality (apredestined fate from a previous life). They exploit weakness andinsecurities of believers, and through that sell products at exorbitant prices
and demand large donations.
It is believed that Mr. Yamagami's mother, a woman of means but caught incircumstances that caused her great unhappiness, was targeted by the former
Unification Church's spiritual sales.
According to data compiled by the National Lawyers Against Spiritual SalesLawyers Liaison Association, the number of consultations received bylawyers nationwide was 28,236 from 1987 to 2021. The total amount ofdamages suffered was approximately 118.1 billion yen. If the number ofconsultations and the amount of damage calculated by the Consumer Center
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through 2006 are included, the total number of consultations is 34,537 andthe amount of damages suffered is 123.7 billion yen.
In 1994, the Fukuoka District Court ruled for the first time that theUnification Church was liable for the tortious actions of its followers, andsince then, there have been numerous court decisions that have found thechurch liable1.
In addition, on March 11, 1999, the Supreme Court of Japan rejected anappeal by the Unification Church and affirmed the Tokyo High Court'sdecision (September 22, 1998) that found the Unification Church vicariously
liable and awarded damages equal to the amounts that the victims wereforced to donate after being subject to the same means as spiritual sales byfollowers.
On September 14, 2000, the Okayama Branch of the Hiroshima High Court
ordered the Unification Church to pay damages on the grounds that theUnification Church deprived the appellant of his freedom to choose hisreligion, forced him to join the church, restricted his free will, and deprived
him of time to live freely. The decision was upheld by the Supreme Court on
February 9, 2001.
On June 29, 2001, the Sapporo District Court ruled that the Unification
Church's evangelism and cult activities, which included solicitation ofpeople while concealing their true identity, "may infringe on the freedom offaith and property rights," and awarded damages against the Unification
Church. The judgment became final on October 10, 2003.
The Tokyo High Court decision of June 28, 2016 recognized the Unification
Church's organizational tort liability as a legal entity, and ordered

1123982D70B1826D049256CC9001B3B5 (courts.go.jp)
7compensation equal to the donations made. The ruling further ordered thepayment of compensation for causing the plaintiff’s marriage to break down
through its illegal solicitation of donations.
Further, on November 10, 2009, in the “Shinsei” criminal trial ofUnification Church followers, the Tokyo District Court ruled that the acts of
Unification Church followers that cause victims to purchase expensive
products by fueling their anxiety as described above are concerted acts with
the Church’s evangelism, and are “highly organized and extremelyoffensive”, as it found the defendants in violation of the Specified
Commercial Transactions Act and sentenced them to prison among otherpenalties. Additionally, multiple salespersons of sales companies for theUnification Church were fined for contravening the same law.
As seen above, the fact that the former Unification Church is a group thathas repeatedly violated rights to free religion and forced donations by illegalmeans has been legally recognized in a number of civil and criminal rulings.

5 Many politicians of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) have received
financial and physical support from the former Unification Church, andin return have promoted the anti-Constitutional policies advocated bythe group.

In 2018 and 2019, the National Association of Lawyers Against SpiritualLawyers called upon Diet members not to attend events related to the former
Unification Church, send messages, or receive support from its followers inelections, as they "run the risk of condoning the illegal activities" of theformer Unification Church.

8After the shooting of former Prime Minister Abe, many of his party's
members, including senior LDP officials who have held key government
positions, admitted that they had received physical and financial support
from the former Unification Church in their elections. Testimony fromseveral LDP officials also revealed that former Prime Minister Abe wasallocating the votes of former Unification Church members to each LDP
candidate.
According to reports, the parties that have been supported by the Unification
Church are not limited to the Liberal Democratic Party, but there are manysimilarities between the policies of the government, the LDP, and theUnification Church, including their anti-communist ideology, discrimination
against women, and hatred of homosexuals (opposition to same-sex
marriage), and citizens are now paying keen attention to the important roleof the former Unification Church in the LDP's policy making process.

6 The head of the police agency is also the chairman of a former
Unification Church-affiliated event.
The government was responsible for deterring the former Unification
Church's repeated and illegal donation-gathering activities. Despite
establishing several criminal cases and obtaining convictions, the police
stopped their investigations midway through 2010 and have not resumed
them to the present day.
The former Unification Church filed an application to change its name to theFamily Peace Federation in June 2015, which the Agency for Cultural
Affairs accepted in July of that year and certified on August 26 of the sameyear. The Prime Minister at the time was Mr. Abe, and the Minister in charge,
the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, was Mr.
Hirofumi Shimomura, a close associate of Mr. Abe. This change was9convenient for the former Unification Church to hide the organization's nowinfamous identity and gain access to the general public.
The current head of the police organization, National Public Safety
Commission Chairman Satoshi Ninoyu, has admitted that he was thechairman of the Kyoto Prefecture Executive Committee for Peace Road 2018
in Kyoto, an event held on August 1, 2018 by the former Unification
Church's Union for Peace in the Universe (UPF) at the Kyoto International
Community House. This shows that a group that has repeatedly engaged inillegal activities had a strong influence at the very top of the policeorganization, making it difficult to ensure proper law enforcement against
illegal activities conducted by those involved with the Unification Church.

7 Conclusion
We recognize that this is a sensitive issue that also involves freedom ofreligion.
However, as mentioned above, the former Unification Church's illegal actsof evangelism and coercion of donations are illegal acts that infringe on the
person's freedom of choice of faith (Article 18 of the Covenant), thebelievers' property rights and rights to life and dignity (Articles 6 and 7 ofthe Covenant), and family rights (Articles 17 and 23 of the Covenant), andare not protected by "freedom of religion". This has been repeatedly
recognized in civil and criminal trials in Japan. We are also very concernedthat the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which is under the strong
influence of this religious organization, will bring about a dire situation for
democracy and freedom of expression (Article 19 of the Covenant).
In fact, until the shooting incident against former Prime Minister Abe,mainline journalism had never reported on the relationship between the10former Unification Church and the LDP. As a result, there are still difficulties
in publicly debating this issue.
The government should first ensure that the existing legal system is strictly
applied to separate the former Unification Church from government agencies
and to preemptively deter illegal activities.
We believe that the HRC's appropriate recommendations to the Japanese
government will constitute the starting point of recovering from this diresituation for democracy and freedom of expression in Japan.

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