|
Disappearance of Japanese Believer Raises Fears Of Abduction and Forced Religious Conversion |
 |
 |
 |
|
GREENBELT, MD, January 18, 2012--A 34-year old Japanese woman missing since January 3 has likely been abducted and is being held against her will to force her to abandon her religious faith, the International Coalition for Religious Freedom (ICRF) reports. Ms. “N.I.” is a member of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church (UC), thousands of whose members have been victimized by relatives who confine them in secret locations as part of forced conversion attempts.
A graduate of the law faculty at Meiji Gakuin University in 2000, Ms. N.I. has been missing since January 3 of this year after failing to return from a visit to her grandmother’s house. She joined the UC, which remains highly controversial in Japan, in 1998. However, like many Japanese Unificationists, she kept her affiliation secret, fearing job discrimination and her family’s disapproval. She informed her father about her church membership in 2007, when she quit her job to work full time for the church. He seemed supportive, but she did not tell her mother about it until 2011.
“We suspect her parents were upset by her engagement to a Korean man, a fellow Unificationist, whom she planned to marry in a church ceremony this spring,” explained ICRF president Dan Fefferman. “Unificationists often marry beyond racial or national boundaries, and a significant number of these abductions result from Japanese parents refusing to accept the right of a UC member to marry a foreigner.”
|
|
Read more...
|
|
|
Independent report documents religious freedom violations in Japan |
|
|
|
|
 Dr. Arron Rhodes
Human Rights Without Frontiers International (HRWF Int'l), an independent nongovernmental organization, has released a 62-page report that documents the abduction and confinement of Japanese citizens for the purpose of religious de-conversion, and the failure of Japanese police and judicial authorities to investigate and prosecute those responsible for such cases of domestic violence.
In an HRWF press release the study's co-author and HRWF director, Willy Fautre, was quoted as saying: “The failure to provide the victims of such kidnappings with equal protection under the law, and the impunity of those responsible, constitute a serious violation of the Japanese people's constitutionally guaranteed rights and the international human rights standards to which Japan is legally bound."
Dr. Aaron Rhodes (pictured above), who helped prepare the report and wrote its introduction, stated: “It is completely unacceptable that all known complaints against parents and exit counselors have been declared ineligible. In the face of such official negligence and impunity, one cannot state that there is freedom of religion in Japan.”
You can read the report at this link. |
|
Human rights in North Korea: An International Coalition To Stop Crimes Against Humanity |
|
|
|
|
Willy Fautré, the director of Human Rights Without Frontiers International is author of the study, “Human rights in North Korea: An International Coalition To Stop Crimes Against Humanity.” In it he describes the work he has done with North Korean refugees. North Korea ranks on every survey as one of the world's most egregious violators of human rights and religious freedom. Please see the ICRF Country Report on the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
This paper (entire text follows) was presented at a conference entitled "Commemorating Human Rights Day 2011" at the Houses of Parliament in London on December 9, 2011.
|
|
Read more...
|
|
|
Interfaith Peace in the Face of Escalating Christian-Muslim Conflict |
|
|
|
|
 A recent report from the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life (http://tinyurl.com/7pjddml) reveals that Christianity is now the world’s largest single faith, with just over a third of the global population identifying themselves as Christian.
But perhaps the study's most significant finding is that the center of Christian population is moving steadily southward. The areas with the largest gains in Christian populations are sub-Saharan Africa and the Asia-Pacific region. During the early 20th century only about six percent of the population in sub-Saharan Africa was Christian. Today the percent of the population that lives in sub-Saharan Africa which is identifiable as Christian is 63 percent.
According to the report, while about 90 percent of Christians live in countries where Christians are in the majority, 10 percent of Christians worldwide live as minorities. In these minority regions, Christians are subject to a disproportionately larger number of religious attacks and harassment.
The horrific Christmas violence against Nigerian Christians by the radical Islamist militant sect Boko Haram is only the most recent example. Coptic Christians in Egypt have come under repeated attack, as have Christians in Indonesia, Iran (where a pastor sits on death row), and Iraq to name a few.
Close behind Christianity in numbers is Islam, at about 25 percent and increasing. If current trends continue, Islam will become the most popular world religion sometime in the mid-21st century.
These fast-changing dynamics have placed the two communities on what appears to be a dangerous collision course and which has translated into ever increasing religious conflict.
Dr. Georgette Bennett, President and Founder of the Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding, addresses the issue in an insightful essay showing that religion can be part of the solution rather than the cause of conflict.
|
|
Read more...
|
|
EU Agency for Fundamental Rights: A Reality Check |
|
|
|
|
The European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA), the Vienna-based organization charged with ensuring the protection of “fundamental rights of people living in the EU,” faces a critical assessment of its performance in this just issued 72-page report.
The study was released by Human Rights Without Frontiers, a non-profit human rights organization based out of Brussels, Belgium. Following is a summary by the author, Dr. Nadja Milanova, and a link to the full document.
|
|
Read more...
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Page 1 of 3 |
