Japan’s government has asked a court to strip the Unification church of its status, amid growing criticism of the group’s fundraising activities after the assassination last year of the former prime minister Shinzo Abe.
If the Tokyo district court accepts the request, the church – whose members are colloquially known as Moonies – will be stripped of its status as a religious corporation and lose exemptions from corporate and property taxes, as well as a tax on income from monetary offerings.
However, it could continue to operate in a new incarnation, enabling it to recruit members and solicit donations, media reports said.
All religions should be stripped of any special get-out clauses.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Japan’s government has asked a court to strip the Unification church of its status, amid growing criticism of the group’s fundraising activities after the assassination last year of the former prime minister Shinzo Abe.
The prime minister, Fumio Kishida, and his cabinet decided this week to ask the court to take action after a year-long investigation into the church’s activities, including claims that it put pressure on members into donating huge sums of money as they sought forgiveness for their “sins”.
“It has impinged on people’s freedoms for a long time, prevented them from making sound decisions, severely damaged them and disrupted their lives,” the education minister, Masahito Moriyama, said shortly before the request was filed.
Abe’s grandfather, the former prime minister Nobusuke Kishi, was instrumental in helping the church establish a presence in Japan in the late 1950s to counter the growing influence of communism and trade unionism.
In the months after Abe’s death, reports emerged of the church’s close ties with politicians, including a large number of MPs belonging to the ruling Liberal Democratic party.
The education ministry has spent almost a year questioning the church and examining internal documents, as well as collecting testimony from people who claim they were pressured into making substantial donations to the organisation, which was founded by Sun Myung Moon, an anti-communist and self-declared messiah, in South Korea in 1954.
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