A court orders the dissolution of the Unification Church in Japan

TOKYO (AP) — A tribunal ordered the dissolution of the Unification Church successful Japan, upholding a authorities petition for a revocation spurred by the probe into the 2022 assassination of erstwhile Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

The Tokyo District Court’s revocation of the church’s ineligible presumption means it volition suffer its tax-exempt privilege and indispensable liquidate its assets. However, the religion tin inactive entreaty the determination to higher courts.

The bid follows a petition by Japan’s Education Ministry successful 2023 to dissolve the influential South Korea-based sect, citing manipulative fundraising and recruitment tactics that sowed fearfulness among followers and harmed their families.

The Japanese subdivision of the religion had criticized the petition arsenic a superior menace to spiritual state and the quality rights of its followers.

The probe into the 2022 assassination of Abe revealed decades of cozy ties betwixt the South Korea-based religion and Japan’s governing Liberal Democratic Party. The religion obtained ineligible presumption arsenic a spiritual enactment successful Japan successful 1968 amid an anti-communist question supported by Abe’s grandfather, erstwhile Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi.

The antheral accused of sidesplitting Abe resented the religion and blamed it for his family's fiscal troubles.

The church, which officially calls itself the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, is the archetypal spiritual radical to look a revocation bid nether Japan’s civilian code. Two earlier lawsuit progressive transgression charges –- the Aum Shinrikyo doomsday cult, which carried retired a sarin nervus state onslaught connected the Tokyo subway system, and Myokakuji group, whose executives were convicted of fraud.

Japan has successful spot hurdles for restraining spiritual activities owed to lessons from the prewar and wartime oppression of state of religion and thought.