Korean religious cults’ pseudo-peace movements

This video from Britain says about itself:

15 February 2003: The day the world said no to war

15 February 2012

15 February 2003 was the biggest protest in human history. In Britain there were two million on London’s streets. In Rome there were even more. Tens of millions of people in over 800 cities across the world said Not in My Name. We didn’t stop the war in Iraq but the protest that day has shaped the politics of a whole generation. Now a feature length film titled We Are Many is being made by Amir Amirani which will document a momentous day. This is the inspiring trailer for the film, which captures the spirit of that day – a spirit which has been shown time and again since, not least by the Arab Spring uprisings.

The world more than ever needs a strong, massive pro-peace movement. A worldwide grassroots movement of people with diverse views on religion and politics. Like the movement against the Iraq war with its many millions of demonstrators in February 2003. Against the warmongering of Rupert Murdoch and his ilk. Against wars for the profits of arms dealers or of Big Oil. Against the bloody war in Ukraine. Against re-starting the Iraq war and even more international escalation of the Syria war.

Many people are looking for peace movements to join to promote their desire for peace. Unfortunately, some ‘peace organisations’ are peace organisations more in name than in reality.

An infamous example of this is the ‘Unification Church’, also known as ‘Moonies’, founded by the late self-appointed ‘Messiah’ Sun Myung Moon from South Korea. Well, the official name is neither ‘Unification Church’ nor ‘Moonies’, but Family Federation for World Peace and Unification. This religious cult also has a satellite organisation, the Universal Peace Federation. There, one can hear nice-sounding, but abstract and vague, speeches about how good peace is. However, concrete action against wars and preparations for wars are hardly ever mentioned.

The Moon organisation has this in common with quite some politicians, who in their speeches support peace in the abstract, while supporting one or more concrete wars. Even Adolf Hitler, the worst war criminal in history, professed vague, abstract notions of peace in beautiful sounding speeches sometimes.

The Moonie church does not go beyond praising peace in abstract terms, as they get much of their income in concrete terms from arms deals.

And there is the Unification Church’s support for racist parties in various countries, like Le Pen’s Front National in France; and the Centrumdemocraten in the Netherlands. Racism does not bring peace.

Also, the Moonies’ links to the World Anti-Communist League which included neo-nazis. And which helped to stoke Cold War flames, with more profit opportunities for Unification Church weapons deals.

In the 1960s and 1970s, the Moon organisation supported the bloody Vietnam war.

Ever since George W Bush started war on Iraq in 2003, the Unification Church supported that war.

According to a Moonie media mouthpiece, the Iraq war should be the start of a hundred years of war without democratic control.

That Moonie media mouthpiece, the Washington Times, publishes propaganda for the torturing dictatorship in Bahrain; a regime which helps to fan the flames of religious fanaticism and war in Syria.

Now, Messiah Sun Myung Moon is dead. However, there is at least one similar ‘god-man’ in South Korea still alive. Using similar vague abstract words about ‘world peace’ as Moon, while doing nothing to stop concrete wars, like Moon.

From the Korea Observer in South Korea yesterday:

Alleged cult leader Lee Man-hee hosts world peace summit in Seoul

By Jon Twich

This week, Korea plays host to a major world peace summit which will be chaired by a “renowned Korean peace activist.” But if you’re in Korea, you won’t be hearing much about it in the news.

Why? Because that big-name activist is none other than Lee Man-hee, leader of Shincheonji Church of Jesus the Temple of the Tabernacle of the Testimony (SCJ), which is known as one of the country’s most controversial religious groups.

From Sept. 17 to 19, the World Alliance of Religions Peace Summit (or WARP Summit, not to be mistaken for the UN-affiliated NGO Religions for Peace which held an interfaith conference in Songdo, Incheon last month) will bring together world leaders, major religious figures, and political activists, all in the name of peace.

Or at least that’s what they’re told. The event is officially hosted by Heavenly Culture, World Peace, Restoration of Light (HWPL), the International Women’s Peace Group (IWPG), the International Peace Youth Group (IPYG), and the Institute for Cultural Diplomacy (ICD), three of which are allegedly controlled by SCJ’s leadership.

And the odd one out, the Berlin-based ICD, pulled their affiliation from HWPL and the WARP Summit on Tuesday, just one day before its opening day (Korea time).

Now, as the countdown to what one SCJ Facebook group called “the biggest peace-event the world has seen” reaches its end, more and more participants are getting cold feet and bailing out on their intercontinental flights.

This 16 September 2014 video is called Korean Cult 신천지 at the Airport.

“We didn’t know the chairman of the peace summit is accused of being a cult leader who claims to be immortal,” a Muslim participant of the event told The Korea Observer upon his arrival at Incheon International Airport Tuesday.

MBC’s PD Notebook, an investigative program, claimed that SCJ makes its followers believe Lee is immortal. Lee, however, didn’t admit it, saying this is a matter that God should decide, not him.

Meanwhile, another Muslim participant claimed that he was disappointed about the organizers because he would no longer be able to give a speech for one of the debate sessions.

“I was initially invited as a panelist, but the organizers later told me that they simply have too many panel members and cannot give me a slot to make a short presentation,” he said. “I will only participate as an observer.”

Yet still more were arriving by the hour, greeted by white-shirted SCJ members cheering and waving welcoming signs.

“I took an early leave to come here to greet religious leaders,” one high school volunteer said asking for anonymity. “We are here for world peace.”

They claim to have successfully invited former heads of state of Romania, Croatia, Kosovo, Ecuador, Peru, Nepal, Mongolia, South Africa, Jordan, Argentina, Armenia, and Albania. They also claim to have the Grand Muftis of Egypt, Macedonia, and Kosovo.

They even invited former U.S. vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin publicly online through Twitter.

Sarah Palin, an even worse warmonger than George W Bush.

And they posted a video congratulatory message from Archbishop Desmond Tutu, which was quickly taken offline shortly after.

“Without fail, every leader we have spoken with has pledged themselves in support of our cause, demonstrating their desire to be a part of HWPL’s work through a signed agreement of solidarity,” Lee says in his greetings message on the organizers’ official website.

This 14 September 2014 video is called Korean Cults – Shincheonji 신천지 2014.

For many foreign residents who have been in Korea for over two years, this is all too familiar. In 2012, SCJ ran an aggressive recruiting campaign targeting foreigners under the front group Mannam Volunteer Association. Through Mannam, they organised numerous activities, from sports teams and a running club to a photography group and charity events.

They pulled in thousands of foreigners, but once word got out of SCJ’s role, participation was decimated. Still, they managed to bring in thousands of unaware foreigners to a large event filling Jamsil Olympic Stadium past capacity on Sept. 16, 2012.

The event was advertised in English as the World Peace Festival, but to Koreans it was the SCJ 6th National Olympiad, an event held every four years to coincide with Lee Man-hee’s birthday on Sept. 15. The fallout from this “large-scale deception” was fierce, filling the expat blogosphere with condemnations and first-hand accounts.

Following that, Mannam went silent. Burned in Korea, they focused their efforts abroad. Under a bevy of new banners, they went abroad to meet with world leaders and engage in diplomacy. They signed an interfaith peace agreement on the Philippine island of Mindanao. Lee Man-hee was appointed honorary ambassador of the International Romani Union National Assembly. He spread the legend of Lee Man-hee, 83-year-old peace activist, divorced from his infamy as a cult leader at home.

So now, many of the friends that have been made overseas are coming to Korea, where they may be exposed to a very different narrative of Lee and SCJ’s place in Korean society. At this year’s WARP Summit, once again taking place in the same week as Lee Man-hee’s birthday, internal memos went out instructing SCJ participants not to mention SCJ or Mannam.

This 214 September 2014 video from South Korea is called An Interview with the Father of a Shinchonji Member.

Outside of a few organized protests by family members of SCJ followers, most people in Korea are unaware that the WARP Summit is happening. There is a media blackout on all things SCJ, which the church used to its advantage. As well, it blocked out its own websites for HWPL, IPYG, and IWPG in Korea to limit the information available, only lifting the block at the commencement of the summit.

The Korea Observer tried but was unable reach the WARP Summit for official comments over the past two days. If you call the number listed on the official website (warpsummit2014.org), you get the response message that the phone is turned off. Nevertheless, despite obvious connections, several volunteers of the summit denied any involvement with Shincheonji.

One of the foreign organisations at ‘Messiah’ Lee Man-hee’s conference is the pro-Bahraini absolute monarchy organisation, the Bahrain Association for Religious Co-existence and Tolerance. So, Moon’s Unification Church are not alone in their friendship with this regime. The Bahrain Association for Religious Co-existence and Tolerance has a sinister, Orwellian Newspeak name, considering the religious INtolerance practiced by the Bahraini dictatorship.

The BARCT tells about ‘Messiah’ Lee Man-hee’s conference in the Bahraini pro-regime paper Gulf Daily News, which especially sent a reporter to Korea for this ‘peace conference’. They would like to have ‘Messiah’ Lee Man-hee’s next conference in Bahrain.

The Bahrain government’s official news agency sent a reporter to Lee Man-hee’s Korea conference as well. They wrote that there are foreign guests ‘from about twelve countries’.

Though, as Jon Twich’s report says, many pre-announced foreign guests failed to turn up at the conference, the Gulf Daily News report says at least some of them did come:

Egyptian Grand Mufti Shawqi Abdel Karim Allam was among the list of high profile speakers set to deliver an opening address yesterday, but he was replaced at the last minute by Doha International Centre for Interfaith Dialogue chairman Dr Ibrahim Saleh Al Naimi.

The Qatari official stressed the importance of dialogue in his speech, describing it as the only way to address conflict among communities.

This official of the dictatorship in Qatar should say that to his own regime, stoking war in Libya and in Syria.

The Gulf Daily News mentions another speaker at this ‘peace conference’: ‘Former Croatian President Stjepan Mesic’.

When Mr Mesic was still president, in 2010, he almost managed to re-start the bloody Yugoslavian civil wars by threatening to invade Bosnia.