Hate Crimes Against the Jehovah’s Witnesses in Japan: The Victims Speak

 JAPAN

Hate Crimes Against the Jehovah’s Witnesses in Japan: The Victims Speak

07/22/2024

The anti-cult campaigns following the assassination of Shinzo Abe generated not only hate speech but physical violence as well. Two women tell their stories.

by Massimo Introvigne

That hate speech generates hate crimes is being dramatically confirmed in Japan, where a number of Jehovah’s Witnesses were physically assaulted after a campaign against them was started following the assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in 2022. The assassin claimed that in 2002 his mother, a member of the Unification Church (now called the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification), went bankrupt because of her excessive donations to the movement. A campaign against the “cults” followed, which also targeted the Jehovah’s Witnesses, including through guidelines published by the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare against the alleged “religious abuse of children” who grow up in conservative religious organizations.

My colleague Holly Folk and I were in Japan this month to attend an academic conference. We had the opportunity to interview two female members of the Jehovah’s Witnesses who were victims of violence.

Y is a sweet old lady who would surely not appear aggressive or threatening to anybody. In February 2024, she was evangelizing door-to-door with a female co-religionist in Chiba. When visiting one of the buildings where they planned to evangelize, Y’s companion pressed the intercom and got an angry answer. “You should pay 100,000 yen and I will listen to you,” a male voice shouted. To avoid a confrontation, the woman simply said, “Please excuse us,” and started leaving the building. The man, however, yelled “Wait!” came out of the door, and slammed it so that the woman was squeezed between the door and the wall. Y was now in front of the man, who pushed her down five steps. Then the man saw the other lady, grabbed her by the hair, and took her too down the stairs. Both Y and her companion quickly left the scene and joined a third female congregant who was waiting for them in the area.

Y was the wife of an elder (a minister of the Jehovah’s Witnesses), and she and her husband decided to share details of the incident with the others elders in the congregation. The elders consulted with the national branch office and met the victims. They encouraged them to report what happened to the police. Y went to the police accompanied by her husband. Y’s companion chose not to make a report to the police to avoid problems with her husband who is not a Jehovah’s Witness. Y told the officers that her purpose was not to be indemnified by the aggressor but to make sure the incident would not happen again. The police told Y that pressing charges would take time and would be complicated. They suggested handling the incident without pressing charges.

Y and her husband, thus, went home without pressing charges. They reported to the elders, who recommended to press charges as the best way to protect everybody in the congregation. Two or three days later, Y and her husband went to the police for the second time. The police told them that they already had an officer working on the case but if they would press charges, then they would have to call him back. They visited with the police the building where the incident took place. The police showed Y the picture of a man they had identified as living in the apartment. Neither Y nor her companion recognized the man. They identified the apartment but the man living there by himself was not the same who had assaulted them. The police told them that perhaps they were confused about the building or the floor, but they insisted their memories were clear. Since the aggressor could not be identified, the police did not take further steps. Y believes that neighbors might have supplied the police with further information. However, as far as she knows they were not interrogated by the police.

“I feel sorry for the man,” Y said. “While I am back to door-to-door evangelization, I will not visit that residential block again, where by the way other Jehovah’s Witnesses received a hostile reception, but I have no bad feelings against the aggressor. Those who are aggressive may be excited by the media campaigns, and their number is increasing. But without knowing it, they are also fulfilling Bible prophecy, which tells us we will be persecuted.”

The experience of S, an energetic woman in her seventies who met us with her husband, was even more dramatic and made national news. In June 2023, she was evangelizing door-to-door near Hiroshima in a building whose residents are well-to-do professionals. She rang the bell of an apartment, standing on an open space behind which there were seven or eight steps of stairs. A middle-aged man came out and kicked her on the side until she fell down the stairs. Her right wrist was broken.

She had gone out to evangelize with several co-religionists, including an elder, who took her to the hospital. “I was so scared,” she told us, “I kept telling everybody, ‘Please do not call the police,’ as I was afraid that if I reported him the man will come for me.” However, she could not conceal the truth to the hospital personnel, who scheduled a surgery for her the next day, and the elder finally informed the police.

When S came home from the hospital, police officers visited her, asked her to reenact the incident, and took pictures. Later, she learned from the media that the man had been arrested and that he was a 57-year-old university associate professor. “I was surprised,” she said, “he didn’t look like a professor at all.” The man’s university was surprised as well, and issued an apology, although he was suspended for a brief period only.

A few weeks later, S was contacted by the prosecutor and had to repeat her story. “I was not angry,” she said, “but I was still scared. I did not want him to go to jail. I just did not want to see him again. And I believed I will not have the stamina to confront him in a trial. So, I went to an organization called Legal Support Center and they found a female lawyer who would represent me. She contacted the man’s lawyer and we settled. I received monetary compensation, and the associate professor undertook not to look for or contact me in the future.”

“I am now back to door-to-door evangelization,” S told us, “although I am still struggling to overcome an extreme fear of stairs. As one of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, I was ready to confront persecution but did not expect it to manifest itself in a violent way in a quiet place like Japan.”

When four United Nations Special Rapporteurs earlier this year signed a statement criticizing Japan for its treatment of the Jehovah’s Witnesses after the Abe assassination, the Japanese government answered that it was never its intention to promote or incite violence. Obviously, the Rapporteurs did not accuse the authorities of organizing the violence, rather they expressed concern about their treatment potentially contributing to stigmatization and suspicion of religious minorities. However, most scholarly studies of hate crimes conclude that, when hate speech is disseminated, particularly by governments, violence unavoidably follows.

https://bitterwinter.org/hate-crimes-against-the-jehovahs-witnesses-in-japan-the-victims-speak/