From Washington DC came an authoritative and uncompromising language that Tokyo can no longer ignore.
February 11, 2025
Operating since some ten years, the International Religious Freedom Summit (IRF) is today an authoritative and established institution that holds regular events in different locations of the world. Co-chaired by former U.S. Ambassador-at-large for International Religious Freedom Samuel Brownback, and by Katrina Lantos Swett, president of the Lantos Foundation for Human Rights and Justice, it is indirectly rooted in the Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom, which was launched in 2018 by then Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. It also works in connection with the International Religious Freedom (IRF) Secretariat, founded and chaired by Greg Mitchell, and presided by former U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) Chair, Nadine Maenza.
In fact, the IRF Summit is probably the largest regular gathering of leaders, ministers of faith, experts, scholars, activists, media people, and politicians advocating for freedom of religion, creed, or belief (FoRB) in the world. It is quite significant that its latest edition, held in Washington, D.C., February 4‒5, 2025, announced the first ever summit in Africa, to be held in Spring 2025 in Kenya, through the joint efforts of the IRF Summit, Pepperdine University in Malibu, California, and the Washington, D.C.-based Religious Freedom Institute.
The US February 4‒5 event featured a large number of panels and speakers, focusing on the different areas of the world where FoRB is in open crisis or seriously endangered. It resolved, as it was often repeated, to continue all possible efforts aimed at informing the general public, encouraging politicians, and helping the suffering until complete freedom will be granted to all faiths and people.
Among the crisis areas, Japan was singled out as a country where, in spite of its democratic regime based on liberty and the rule of law, serious threats endanger minority groups. At the end of the day, all those who, for any reason, are personæ non gratæ to a camarilla of leftist politicians, conniving judges, and complicit media for being “too religious” and “too conservative” are attacked.
This is now the case of the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Unification Church, now called the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification. The problem is not limited to these groups, which some may polemically though unjustly define as “fringe” or label by using the derogatory and to-be-avoided term “cults.” It concerns a general and deep attitude of the Japanese government, which increasingly understands its own powers as unlimited and unchecked to the extent of thinking that arbitrarily interfering with the lives of people and groups that have committed no crime is part of its rights. Operating a spectacular inversion of logic that transformed the victim into the perpetrator, and violating all kinds of national and international laws, the government of Japan has requested the dissolution of the Family Federation (FF) as a religious organization, following (in an undue and questionable way) the assassination of former Prime Minister, Abe Shinzo (1954-2022), on July 8, 2022.
Due to the particularly vicious nature of the FF case in Japan, a special dinner-event was held at the IRF Summit 2015 on February 4, sponsored by The Washington Times Foundation (WTF) and the Universal Peace Federation (UPF). The event was opened by a ceremony: representatives of different faiths poured together water in a basin, as a thank rendered to God. They were Rabbi Zeev-Wolf Rubins representing Judaism; Achille Acolatse and Reverend John E. Harrison, Sr., representing Christianity; Imam Rashad Abdul-Rahmaan representing Islam; Venerable Katugastota Upratana representing Buddhism; Minister Shashi Chopra representing Hinduism; and Ajay Pal Khalsa representing Sikhism.
Greeted by Ambassador Brownback, Katrina Lantos Swett, Thomas McDevitt, chairman of the board of directors of “The Washington Times,” and Michael Jenkins, president of UPF International and the WTF, the audience was introduced to the topic by former Speaker of the US House of Representatives Newt Gingrich. Through a pre-recorded message, he said that the dissolution of the FF in Japan would seriously ruin that country’s relationship with the US to a major, undeserved advantage of communist China. Reverend Tomihiro Tanaka, president of the FF in Japan, underlined the stubborn nature of the persecution waged against the FF in contrast to the democratic nature of the Japanese government. French attorney Patrica Duval, author of important reports on the matter, delivered a speech highlighting all the critical points of the case.
All this introduced the audience to a panel discussion, entitled “Helping Japan to Overcome Their Religious Freedom Crisis” which was moderated by this writer. Attorney Duval, attorney Tatsu Nakayama from Japan, deputy director of legal affairs for the FF of Japan Norishige Kondo, and Lantos Swett responded to my questions, looking for a correct framework to evaluate the Japanese situation.
All concluded that the events now taking place in Japan amount to an unprecedented persecution that has no justification in facts and laws. They violate both legal norms and common sense. Political and ideological reasons are behind the request by the government to dissolve the FF. Should Tokyo succeed in this obnoxious effort, democracy in Japan would suffer a terrible blow. It may also constitute a sinister precedent for other democratic countries, which would feel encouraged by Japan in interfering with ForB at the serious detriment of their citizens.
Former US Representative Dan Burton further addressed the audience, underlining that the US government should do all that is in its power to persuade Japan to stop all actions against minority groups and the FF. His speech paved the way to the concluding remarks by Brownback, Lantos Swett, and Jenkins. Then all speakers (Reverend Paula White-Cain, spiritual advisor to US president Donal J. Trump, unable to attend at the last minute, was represented by Reverend Todd Lamphere, Chief of Staff of Paula White Ministries) took the stage for signing the “Human Rights and Religious Freedom Impact Statement,” a document reinstating and reaffirming the universal need of protecting ForB.
Source: bitterwinter.org
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