Stop Japan Abductions: Help Quake Relief

Human-Rights Activist To Help Quake Relief in Japan

Mr. Luke Higuchi, president of Survivor's Against Forced Exit (SAFE), a group dedicated to stopping religious kidnapping and forced conversion in Japan, is scheduled to spend several weeks in Japan to assist relief efforts and to gather facts about the status of Japanese victims of religious persecution.

A U.S. citizen and a resident of Leonia, New Jersey, Mr. Higuchi will serve as a liaison and translator for nonprofit relief organizations that will send food and medicine to the hardest hit areas on Japan's eastern coast. Mr. Higuchi is also a Unificationist active in the Northern New Jersey branch of the Unification Church.

"I am going back to my native Japan to rebuild the country – but not only with bricks and mortar but with a better human-rights foundation," Mr. Higuchi says, adding: "Although I still have a passion to help victims of religious persecution, the fact is that now is the time to help the whole nation of Japan, regardless of partisan or religious differences. We will help anyone, including those who have gone out of their way to deny the religious freedom of members of new religious movements."

Mr. Higuchi has spent the last year speaking at rallies and on public-affairs TV programs about the problem of kidnapping and false imprisonment suffered by more than 4,300 Japanese citizens who are members of the Unification Church. (Mr. Higuchi's talk at a press conference in Bowie, MD on March 15, 2011 was cancelled in deference to the crisis in Japan.)

Sometimes referred to as "deprogramming," the practice of holding people against their will for days, weeks, or months and until they agree to recant their beliefs was the fate of hundreds of American citizens 35 years ago, but such practices ended after successful prosecutions of the so-called deprogrammers. However, in Japan, the phenomenon continues and has drawn investigations by two working groups within the UN Human Rights Council. Professional faith-breakers in Japan reportedly are paid $50,000 to $100,000 to forcibly de-convert members of minority religions, who sometimes endure physical and psychological abuse for weeks at a time.

Mr. Higuchi has said that he will relay some reports of his fact-finding mission which could be published on the Familyfed.org website while he is in Tokyo.


The Case of Mr. Goto
Toru Goto was born in Yamagata, Japan on November 2, 1963. During his college days in Nihon University, his older brother invited him to learn the Divine Principle which later led him to join the Unification Church. After graduating in 1987 with a degree in architecture, he started working in a construction company. His first kidnapping occured in October of 1987, which he successfully escaped by pretending to surrender his faith after a month of confinement. He was kidnapped again on September 11, 1995, and the confinement continued for 12 years and 5 months until he was released on February 10, 2008. On October 2008, together with other victims and determined people, he founded a civil group called “Association to Eliminate Religious Kidnapping and Forced Conversion”. He presently serves as the vice-representative of the group.

See Also:

Rev Moon Donate $1.7 Million to Japan

Stop Japan Abductions Organization
International Coalition for Religious Freedom

Posted in: Japan,News,Religious Freedom