Tetsuya Yamagami, his attacker, claimed that Abe was to blame for the church’s family going bankrupt.
The religion claims that the assassination of Abe has wrongfully denigrated it.
The Unification Church will be able to continue operating as an organization even though it will reduce its tax advantages if it is dissolved.
Yamagami asserted that his family, who had been a member of the church for three years, was compelled to make donations. Thousands of dollars’ worth of lawsuits have been filed in response to similar allegations.
A spiritual order may be dissolved under Japan’s Religious Corporations Law if its activities are” evidently recognized as being greatly harmful to people welfare.”
The temple was previously fined by Japan’s education government for failing to respond to inquiries about its activities by the Tokyo District Court.
Before his passing, there was a lot of discussion about Abe’s connection with the church, particularly on social media.
He made an appearance as a speaker on the sidelines at an event related to the chapel in 2021. Due to the church’s anti-communist attitude, his father, who was also a former prime minister, was rumored to have been close to it.
According to experts, it first arrived in Japan in the 1960s and developed relationships with officials to increase its popularity.
The church has been embroiled in controversy for decades, and detractors have called it” cult-like.”
Users who assert that they were coerced into making donations to the chapel have filed numerous complaints against it. According to their attorneys, the plaintiffs have lost at least 5.4 billion renminbi($ 39 million,£ 33 million ) over the previous five years.
The Liberal Democratic Party, led by the current prime minister, Fumio Kishida, discovered that 179 of its 379 politicians had ties to the Unification Church.
Following that, Mr. Kishida urged LDP politicians to sever ties with the Unification Church and emphasized his lack of affiliation with it personally.
After recently refusing requests to do so, he ordered an investigation into the church in October of last year and declared that” he was taking really” allegations that the congregation had taken advantage of its members for financial gain.
According to Professor Yoshihide Sakurai of Hokkaido University, who has written a guide on the Unification Church and is an authority on religion issues, the power of the” very dangerous” religion may be significantly reduced.
According to Prof. Sakurai, the public will become afraid of it, and it will be viewed as scandalous for politicians to be associated with it.
The court order never, he said, stop the group’s activities because it still has dozens of affiliated political and business organizations, such as magazine publishing companies, travel agencies, and suppliers.
The breakdown purchase might not even be granted by the court, according to Prof. Sakurai.
” Tens of thousands of supporters also claim that they chose to join the church and are still taking part in its activities. It will be challenging for the court to determine that the organization is wholly judicial because both patients and followers exist at the same time, he said.
Hideharu Tamura in Tokyo provided extra coverage.
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July 23, 2022
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