President Biden should raise the issue of the state of freedom of religion in Japan when he meets with Prime Minister Fumio Kishida during his visit to the U.S. this week, several religious liberty advocates said Tuesday.
The Kishida government “has relentlessly cracked down on religious minorities” since the assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe by the disgruntled son of a member of the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, a group formerly known as the Unification Church.
A group affiliated with the church founded and owns The Washington Times.
Alleged ties between the Family Federation and Mr. Kishida‘s ruling Liberal Democratic Party sparked a call — chiefly from leaders of Japan’s Communist Party — to dismantle the Family Federation. Mr. Kishida has taken up those demands and a Tokyo district court is weighing a move to dissolve the church.
The Rev. Luke Higuchi, a Family Federation minister, told this year’s International Religious Freedom Summit in Washington that he is “worried that Japan is in a crisis of religious freedom.”
Former U.S. Rep. Dan Burton, Indiana Republican, took up the cause in an op-ed for Newsmax, writing, “If the [Japanese] government moves to restrict citizens’ right to believe as they wish, what’s to stop it from overruling other basic rights at will?”
Mr. Kishida‘s state visit this week “is an important opportunity to confront this issue,” the statement said. “We must remind our dear friends in the Japanese government that the right to freedom of religion is truly a litmus test for all other human rights.”
• Mark A. Kellner can be reached at mkellner@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.