Japanese women claim abduction and confinement of church members

March 19, 2010

(Seoul=Newsis) Online news team = Japanese women are causing a stir with claims they cannot visit their home country of Japan out of fear that they may be abducted or confined.
 
According to the claims made by Japanese women followers of the Unification Church residing in Korea, “The kidnapping and confinement of Unificationists and spouses alike has been led by certain Japanese Christian ministers, business oriented lawyers and left wing ‘deprogrammers,’ who are using force due to their having different beliefs. This is happening in Japan, a nation that is a major economic power and where religious freedom is protected by the constitution.”

More than 4,300 Japanese Unification Church followers have been abducted and confined since 1966, according to their survey.

One example is Toru Goto. He is 182cm tall, but during his abduction and detention of 12 years and 5 months, his weight declined to 39kg—the weight of an elementary school student—at the time he regained his freedom in 2008.

“My experience of incarceration, during which I was physically beaten up, cursed on a daily basis and unable to do anything, was truly a living hell,” says Goto. With Goto’s incident as a trigger, the Unification Church has begun to make claims on human rights issues related to the kidnapping and imprisonment of its believers.

There are so many victims of the abductions. Examples include the following:
• A 27-year-old Japanese woman married to a Korean was kidnapped and confined while on a visit to her home in Japan¬—eventually the circumstances led her to take her own life;
• A pregnant woman still in fear and feeling the after effects 10 years since being threatened with the words: “We will help you have an abortion if you give up your faith in the Unification Church;”
• A believer who lost her memory after jumping from a 6-storey apartment building to escape from captivity;
• A parent who eventually committed suicide after finding out that his daughter had been raped by a “deprogrammer” he hired to persuade her to give up her faith.

The majority of the abduction victims suffer from post traumatic stress disorder (a state of mental confusion occurring after an experience of great fear).

There are estimated to be more than 7,000 Japanese women members of the Unification Church who are living in Korea with Korean husbands. Among them, 300 have the experience of escaping from being kidnapped and confined. Some 200 among them are still unable to visit their parents’ homes in Japan for fear they will be abducted and incarcerated again.

According to the facts confirmed by the Association of Victims of Abduction, Confinement and Forced Conversion of Japanese Unification Church Members, the reason these people cannot visit their homes in Japan is that “When they reported to the Japanese police about their abduction, the police had no interest in listening to them, and even when these women notified the police after their escape, still the police did not respond, claiming that it was a family matter.”

More than fifty women representatives of the Association of Victims of Abduction, Confinement and Forced Conversion of Japanese Unification Church Members—the group of Japanese women believers in the Unification Church who cannot visit Japan for fear of abduction—will be handing a petition to the Japanese embassy in Japanese traditional national costume, at 2 pm on March 23, asking for their desperate situation to be resolved.

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