TOKYO: Japan’s Cultural Affairs Agency on Tuesday presented to an expert panel a draft of rules on exercising the right to ask questions in a proposed investigation into the controversial religious group known as the Unification Church.

The draft criteria say that the government can exercise the questioning right for a religious group under the religious corporation law when people linked to the group commit law violations repeatedly or when grave damage is inflicted, on the grounds of such objective evidence as verdicts in civil suits and other public judgments, according to informed sources.

The agency will consider how to deal with the Unification Church, officially called the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, based on the criteria to be approved by the expert panel.

The government is expected to exercise the questioning right for the Unification Church within this year after presenting a list of questions to the Religious Juridical Persons Council, comprising the same members as the expert panel.

The religious corporation law stipulates that the government can issue a dissolution order to religious organizations if they commit illegal acts found to clearly damage public welfare or acts that deviate significantly from their stated purposes. The government can exercise the questioning right for religious groups suspected of meeting these conditions.

According to the sources, the draft says that the government will make a judgment on whether there are such suspicions in the context of whether acts of religious groups at issue are committed on an organizational basis and also whether their acts are malicious and continuing.

Last month, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida pointed out that there are civil court rulings that have found the Unification Church liable for organizational illegal acts and ordered the culture minister to proceed with the procedures to exercise the questioning right.

Jiji Press