The Words of the Burton Family
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The Words of the Burton Family |
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Pressroom
Douglas
Burton
Media relations HSA UWC
Unification Church North
American Headquarters
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
New York, NY -- Some American citizens married to Japanese members of the Unification Church are concerned about travel to Japan to visit their in-laws in case of an unexpected attempt to de-convert their spouses. A mother of two three-year-old girls, lives with her Japanese husband, Masa, near Union, New Jersey. She is concerned about whether Japanese police would help her if her husband were kidnapped and confined by opponents of his church. Ms. N. is aware of the fact that more than 4,300 Unificationists have been kidnapped and subjected to forced conversion by worried relatives and professional deprogrammers since 1966 without a single prosecution of the perpetrators.
"Right now we're agonizing over whether or not to postpone our trip to Japan or wait until next year," she says. "My husband's grandmother is in her 90s and we don't know if she'll survive that long, as well as he'd be missing his family reunion and the auspicious memorial year since his grandfather's death and the auspicious memorial year since his other grandmother's death," she explains.
"I had a nightmare the other night about my husband being kidnapped and me running around trying to rescue him while still holding the babies. Very terrifying," she adds. Ms. N. plans to check in with the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo before visiting in-laws to let them know of her concerns. In addition she plans to alert friends and neighbors in the United States if her husband gets grabbed by professional deprogrammers.
If something happens to her husband, she says, "my friends will then start emailing everyone they know with the link to our emergency web page which will inform them of US-government telephone numbers, and Japanese-government phones to call."
Ms. N. joined the Unification Church in California in 1989 and married Mr. Masa N. in 1995. She says she plans to raise her daughters in the Jewish as well as the Unificationist tradition. Ms. N. says her relationship with her father and mother are very good, but that it wasn't always so. In 1990 her mother consulted with a professional deprogrammer who offered to coerce her daughter to change her beliefs for a $10,000 fee. Her mother said, "no."
That amount is a paltry sum compared to what forced-conversion professionals reportedly charge misguided relatives of Unification Church members in Japan -- upwards of $50,000.
According to Segye Times, a Korean daily, a committee of the Japanese Parliament took up the issue of forced conversion on May 14. Councilor Tsukasa Akimoto of the Liberal Democratic Party questioned Chairman Hiroshi Nakai of the National Public Safety Commission and Justice Minister Keiko Chiba.
"Even if it involves parents and children, abduction and confinement is a crime violating basic human rights, and the police must be fully involved in investigating such crimes from the earliest stage," Councilor Akimoto said.
Also on May 14, 2010, the Reverend Dr. Walter Fauntroy, a former Congressman and a respected Civil Rights leader, issued a statement supporting the prosecution of the perpetrators of forced conversion in Japan.
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