Coalition for Religious Freedom Update for May 27, 2012

Great News from Japan --Ms. “N.I.,” age 34, who has been missing since January 3 of this year, managed to escape on May 2 after a confinement of 120 days. She is now safely away from her captors and staying with members of the Mito Unification Church. Ms. N.I, has been a member of the UC for 13 years. From1998-2006 she was a faithful UC member who worked at a non-church company. In August 2007 she decided to devote herself to full-time activity, which she continued until the time of her abduction. She had been planning to be blessed in the next UC Marriage Ceremony.

Mr. Shunsuke Uotani, who interviewed Ms. N.I. in Mito, reports that during her stay in the confinement place, a “Christian counselor,” Mrs. Emiko Kimura (we do not know whether this is her real name or not), visited her and tried to talk to her. Ms. N.I. informed her that she did not wish to stay confined and wanted to leave, but Mrs. Kimura said that she would not touch the issue because it was a matter between Ms. N.I. and her parents. Ms. N.I. felt that she could not trust her because she endorsed confinement; so she declined to talk to her. After that Mrs. Kimura visited the place and talked only with Ms. N.I.’s parents.

After four months of confinement, Ms. N.I was able to discover the combination to the lock on the door which kept her confined and was able to escape. She is now safely back with her church family in Mito. Thanks to everyone who kept her in their prayers.

Ms. Miyama’s Trip --The visit of Ms. Kiyomi Miyama to Washington DC and New York was extremely helpful to our effort. Ms. Miyama presented her testimony to Ambassador-At-Large for Religious Freedom Suzan Johnson Cook at the State Department.

She gave a separate briefing with State Department staff and a US Congressman on Capitol Hill, and also at several other meetings.

Ms. Miyama explained how the faith breakers trained her mother for 5 years to feel guilt and commit to doing whatever the deprogrammer said. She testified that at one point she was almost able to escape when her mother left the door unlocked to empty the trash. However, her mother and brother caught her and forcibly dragged her, screaming for help, back into the apartment. Because of the disturbance, police were called to the scene, but refused to intervene, even though she was in her late 20s at the time. At the meetings she also presented Mr. Goto’s case and testified that at one point during her confinement she was brought to Mr. Goto’s confinement place to influence him to give up.

Ms. Miyama’s personal testimony confirmed numerous points we have been emphasizing:

 Police do not help faith-breaking victims even when they come to the confinement place and are asked by the victim to liberate them.  Parents often do not initiate the confinement but are “educated” and advised by the faith- breakers that this is the only way to “rescue” the victim.  “Rehabilitation” involves trying to make others leave the church. In Ms. Miyama’s case it even involved a requirement to divorce her husband before she was allowed to leave confinement.

Ms. Miyama also visited several other congressional offices and met with both members of congress and congressional aides. She also met with Dr. Barrett Duke, director of the Ethics and Public Policy Commission of the Southern Baptist Church, the largest protestant denomination in the United States. Later spoke to a SAFE meeting in New York City and then returned to DC for In Jin Nim’s speech at Lovin’ Life Ministries.

We’ve Moved! A big change for ICRF this month is that we finally completed our long- planned move into our new offices at the Washington Times building. Our new address is 3600 New York Avenue, NE; Third Floor; Washington DC 20002. Our new phone number is (202)-558-5462. We are nicely situated on the third floor of the building, in a bright, spacious office overlooking the National Aboretum. Other organizations sharing the floor are the Universal Peace Federation USA, the UPF International, the Summit Council for World Peace, and of course the Times executive offices. We are very grateful to the Unification Church of America for their generous support in providing this space to us, and especially to Jim Gavin a Times board member, for his help in facilitating the move. We also thank the Washington Times staff and the building management team for for their warm welcome and logistical assistance.

Daily Pennsylvanian Article. A new article has been published by the Daily Pennsylvanian which goes a long way toward correcting the negative impression created by their earlier piece. Significantly, the article includes several paragraphs dealing with the issue of faith- breaking in Japan. UC press officer Doug Burton stressed that this is one of the few times that “an independent press source in the United States has published Unificationist claims about forced conversion in Japan.”

Here are the relevant paragraphs:

Pastor Iwasaki Shota, supervisor of Lovin’ Life Ministries in Delaware and Pennsylvania, said more than 4,000 members of the Unification Church have been abducted in Japan and have undergone “deprogramming” — tactics like humiliation, starvation and sexual harassment used to force them into giving up their faith.

He added that there has been a “whole operation of media, government and police working on the side of the deprogrammers” against not only the church’s first generation in the United States in the 1970s and 1980s, but also the current generation in Japan.

Shota said he and other activists are appealing to students to get them to work with Congress and ministers in the US to help the situation in Japan.

Here is a link to the article: http://thedp.com/index.php/article/2012/05/creating_a_new_generation_of_the_unification _church

CONTACT: 3600 New York Avenue, NE, Third Floor, Washington, DC 20002 Email: icrfusa@gmail.com Website: www.religiousfreedom.com