Journalist Yoshio Arita explains why he sued the former Unification Church.

Targeted by the ” 8-second statement

Yoshio Arita, 73, a member of the House of Representatives and a journalist, has been pursuing the problems of the former Unification Church (now the Family Association for World Peace and Unification) for more than 40 years. Did you know that he has been absent from television for the past several years?

He says that the reason for this is a lawsuit filed against him by the former Unification Church.

Arita was sued in October2010. He was accused of defamation for comments he made on the NTV program “Sukkiri” broadcast on August 19 of the same year. The program featured the relationship between Kōichi Hagiuda, 61, a member of the House of Representatives, and the former Unification Church, and Mr. Arita, as a commentator, said the following

The National Police Agency has already admitted that they are an antisocial group that has been engaged in psychic sales.

The former Unification Church demanded 22 million yen in damages from Mr. Arita and NTV for the eight-second comment in the over 40-minute feature. Mr. Arita’s side won both the first and second trials,

The day after the lawsuit was filed, requests to appear on TV dropped off the charts. I haven’t had a single request to appear on TV since the day after I was sued,” Arita lamented.

Arita lamented.

It is their way of suing not only themselves but also the TV stations at the same time. It takes a lot of time, effort, and money to prepare for a trial. Busy program directors want to avoid that kind of hassle. So they say, ‘If we let Arita appear on the program, we will be sued again, so let’s not do it. With this lawsuit, the church has achieved its goal of removing me from the media. This is truly a ‘slap lawsuit.

SLAPP ( strategic lawsuit against public participation )” refers to a lawsuit filed for the purpose of intimidation, and is also called a “frightening lawsuit. In many cases, the compensation sought is exorbitantly high.

Why Mr. Arita Decides to Fight Back

Mr. Arita is not the only one who has been sued by the former Unification Church. After the shooting of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, lawyers Hideteru Yashiro, Kentaro Motomura, and Masaki Kito, who have criticized the church, along with TV stations, have also been sued in expensive lawsuits, many of which have been dismissed.

Finally, Mr. Arita fought back.

In January 2013, he filed a lawsuit against the former Unification Church, its president Tomihiro Tanaka, and Shuya Fukumoto, the lawyer representing the former Unification Church in a series of lawsuits, seeking 11 million yen in damages. The complaint states.

The lawsuit is filed for the purpose of forcing the defendants to bear a large amount of costs for the lawsuit, and thus constitutes a violation and abuse of the “right to a fair trial.

（The gravity of the illegality of slap lawsuits lies in the fact that they infringe on the freedom of expression not only of the accused, but also of society at large, by forcing the atrophy of similar speech. Therefore, this lawsuit to declare the slap lawsuit illegal is not only a suit to seek recovery of the plaintiff’s own damages, but also a suit to defend freedom of expression.

Mr. Arita sees that “the suppression of speech by the former Unification Church has evolved over time.

In the ’70s and early ’80s, they confronted errors in critical articles and had apologies and corrected articles published. These were compiled into a “mass media apology collection” and notified to believers. By making the media think that the organization was “troublesome,” the group had a certain effect in encouraging them to self-regulate their reporting.

In the mid-1980s, when the Asahi Journal criticized the church, believers called to protest simultaneously, clogging the phone lines not only of the Asahi Shimbun, but also of the nearby National Cancer Center and the Tsukiji Market. According to Arita, “Believers were instructed to call in unison at a specific time with a 10-yen coin in their hands.

When TBS criticized the joint wedding ceremony in ’92, 30,000 protest calls poured in in one day.

Another purpose of Mr. Arita’s lawsuit

Direct harassment such as telephone attacks adversely worsen the image of the church.” So this time, when criticism of the former Unification Church resurfaced after the incident involving former Prime Minister Abe, they began to silence speech by the legal means of a trial to pinpoint and silence noisy lawyers and journalists,” said Arita.

There is no end to the number of cases in which groups with financial and organizational power target critical individuals and media outlets with a barrage of lawsuits. Mr. Arita continues.

Slap lawsuits, harassment lawsuits, and lawsuits to silence people are commonplace in Japan as well. We need to show that such things will not be tolerated. That is the purpose of this lawsuit.”

Overseas, “anti-slap laws” are being developed to regulate such “slap lawsuits,” and some states are discouraging them on the grounds that they violate freedom of speech, but in Japan there are no laws or regulations, and the situation has been left unchecked.

In an interview with Friday Digital, the former Unification Church responded as follows

─ In response to the lawsuit against Mr. Arita.

─There is no fact that the National Police Agency has recognized our organization as an “anti-social group,” and since the lawsuit is extremely defamatory of our organization and church members, we have decided to file the lawsuit. In a series of trials, there has been no finding that Mr. Arita’s statements are true.

─ You were sued by Mr. Arita, claiming that it was a “slap lawsuit.

In the first place, it is incorrect to call this a “slap lawsuit. Since our corporation has been severely defamed by Mr. Arita’s baseless statements, it is a matter of course for us to seek relief from the court in order to restore our reputation, and there is absolutely no reason why this should be judged as a wrongful lawsuit.

Rather, it is Mr. Arita who, knowing that the previous lawsuit does not meet the requirements for a wrongful lawsuit, has filed this lawsuit to attract public attention, claiming that he has been the victim of a slap lawsuit, etc. It can be said that this lawsuit is a wrongful lawsuit.

The lawsuit filed by Mr. Arita will be heard in the Tokyo District Court on July 15. We will keep an eye on the outcome of the trial.