The mother of the man accused of murdering Shinzo Abe is a member of the Unification Church. This was confirmed on Monday July 11 by this organization, also known as the “Moon sect”. The suspect, Tetsuya Yamagami, 41, “resented a certain organization” and decided to kill the former Japanese prime minister because he believed he had a connection to it, police said last Friday Japanese, the day of her death.
Japanese media quickly mentioned a religious organization without naming it, and claimed that Tetsuya Yamagami was angry with it because it allegedly obtained large donations from her mother, putting their own family in great financial difficulty.
The Unification Church was founded in 1954 in South Korea by Sun Myung Moon (1920-2012). The teachings of this cult are based on the Bible, with new interpretations. Here are some facts about this religious movement that has always cultivated ties with political leaders, while carving out a global economic empire.
- Who was its founder, Sun Myung Moon?
The controversial Sun Myung Moon was born into a farming family in what is now North Korea. He claimed to have had at the age of 15 a vision of Jesus Christ enjoining him to continue his mission so that humanity reaches a stage of purity “without sin”.
A refugee from North Korea, rejected by the South Korean Protestant Churches considering him a heretic, Sun MyungMoon founded his own Church in Seoul in 1954, which very quickly got involved in politics by initially adopting a fiercely anti-Communist line, attracting thus the sympathy of South Korea’s military regime at the time.
Sun MyungMoon also rubbed shoulders with foreign heads of state, like Richard Nixon in the United States, whom he had supported during the Watergate scandal. Elsewhere in France, in the 1980s, his Church had briefly maintained links with the National Front. Pierre Ceyrac had played the role of hyphen. This member of the sect in France was notably an FN deputy in 1986 before leaving the party in 1994.
The organization is gradually becoming an economic empire present in many sectors (construction, food, automotive, tourism, education, media…) which will make its founder a billionaire. Sun Myung Moon made his first world tour in 1965 and settled in the United States in the early 1970s. Sentenced for tax evasion by American justice, he spent more than a year in prison in the country at the beginning of the 1980s.
- What is its importance ?
Known for celebrating mass collective marriages, the Unification Church is today controlled by the widow of its founder, Hak Ja Han, his second wife with whom he had a dozen children.
The organization claimed in 2012 that it had three million followers worldwide. However, this number is greatly exaggerated, according to experts. Its influence has clearly declined since the 1980s, due to social and political changes in South Korea, various scandals and internal splits, before and after the death of its founder.
Beyond its country of origin, the Church is mainly present in the United States – where it calls itself henceforth “Federation of Families for World Peace and Unification” – and in Japan, a country where it would have several tens of thousands of devotees.
- What are the links with Shinzo Abe?
Tomihiro Tanaka, the president of the Japanese branch of the Unification Church, confirmed on Monday that the suspect’s mother had been a member of the organization since 1998 and found herself in financial difficulty around 2002.” We do not know the circumstances that led this family to bankruptcy,” he said, however, saying that donations for his Church were made on a voluntary basis and that the amounts were free.
Tomihiro Tanaka also pointed out that Shinzo Abe had “never” been one of its members or advisers. However, organizations close to the Unification Church regularly invite leading political figures for conferences on the subject of world peace.
Former US President Donald Trump spoke online for one such symposium in 2021, and Shinzo Abe was also criticized by a group of Japanese lawyers for sending a video message at a similar event. . These lawyers, who defend people in Japan accusing the sect of having ruined them, also protested when Shinzo Abe sent a message of congratulations at a large mass wedding ceremony organized by the Church in 2006.
In a statement released on Saturday, the Unification Church expressed its “shock and sorrow” at the death of Shinzo Abe, describing him as a “world-respected Japanese statesman active in peace building.” in Asia”.
Otherwise, as specified The cross, Nobusuke Kishi, the grandfather of the assassinated Prime Minister, had established links with the Unification Church and Sun Myung Moon, in the early 1960s, in the midst of the Cold War. This former Prime Minister of Japan (1957-1960) was allegedly involved in the creation of a political group linked to the Unification Church, which shared his anti-communist opinions, mentions on his side the Guardian.