Japan, a nation already under fire for its attacks on the Family Federation for World Peace Unification, better known as the Unification Church (UC), is one of the offenders. The July 2022 assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe—a murder motivated, according to anti-religionist and professional dehumanizer Steve Hassan, by Abe’s support for the Unification Church—triggered new, more severe policies on religions and investigations of several minority religious communities, including the Jehovah’s Witnesses.
According to USCIRF, the spate of new policies and intense public scrutiny of that religious community have “negatively impacted Jehovah’s Witnesses and risk criminalizing their peaceful religious activities and jeopardizing their safety.”
The community also reports bullying at school, hate speech, discrimination, firings at work and violent attacks.
In December 2022, Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare released a series of vaguely worded “Questions and Answers” (Q&A) guidelines purported to detect and prevent child abuse in a religious context. As one example that the report provides: “forcing a child to participate in religious activities, etc., during hours that may interfere with the child’s schooling or daily life constitutes neglect.” There is no definition of “forcing,” nor any clear-cut delineation of what exactly these “religious activities” are and how they may differ from nonreligious activities—such as music lessons, parties and sports—that may also, it may be argued, “interfere with the child’s schooling.”
Since the release of the Q&A guidelines, the Jehovah’s Witnesses have reported a 638 percent increase in hate incidents, including mass murder threats. The community also reports bullying at school, hate speech, discrimination, firings at work and violent attacks.
The lamps of religious freedom for Jehovah’s Witnesses are guttering in Singapore as well, where eight members of the faith are in jail for conscientious objection—including three who maintained their position even after completing their first prison term.
In South Korea, too, Jehovah’s Witnesses are being punished for observing their faith’s mandate to not serve in the military. The civilian alternative, offered as of 2019, is, in effect, punishment for their beliefs, requiring conscientious objectors to live and work in prison for twice as long—36 months—as they would be required to serve in the military.
In Egypt, all Jehovah’s Witness religious activities are banned. In Tajikistan, they are criminalized and included on the Supreme Court’s list of “extremist organizations.” In Eritrea, community members are detained indefinitely without charge or trial solely because of their religious activities.
Denial of local or national religious registration is used as a catch-all to justify arrests and, in some cases, disruption of religious services in Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.
In Azerbaijan, religious registration for Jehovah’s Witnesses is permitted in the capital, Baku, but nowhere else and, as yet, there is no alternative to mandatory military service, even though the constitution allows it.
In Kazakhstan, 20 Jehovah’s Witnesses were charged with violations for carrying out their missionary work.
If Japan is any example, the egregious violations of freedom of religion by these and other nations hasn’t been and won’t be confined to “just” one or two faiths.
In other words, expect more.
USCIRF has its work cut out for it in the foreseeable future.
