Update: Press Conference to Inform of Religious Freedom abuses against Women

Bush Administration Official To Speak at Press Event in Bowie, Maryland

Former Ambassador Ellen Sauerbrey Joins Protest of Religious Freedom Abuse in Japan

Washington, DC – Former Assistant Secretary of State Ellen Sauerbrey is expected to speak at a press conference called by the Women’s Federation for World Peace (WFWP) at 10:30 a.m. Tuesday, March 15, 2011 at the Bowie Public Library (15210 Annapolis Road, Bowie Maryland) to call attention to religious kidnapping and forced de-conversion of Unificationists in Japan.  Ambassador  Sauerbrey was the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women from 2006 to 2008. The event was called by Angelika Selle, President of the WFWP and a longtime resident of Bowie. Speakers will include Mrs. Diane Abendroth of Bowie, who endured religious kidnapping in the United States, and Mrs. Nanae Goto of Washington, D.C,. who was kidnapped and beaten during a two-year confinement in Japan. Mr. Luke Higuchi, the president of Survivors Against Forced Exit (SAFE), will speak along with Minister Jane Wells of Lorton, Virginia, co-pastor of Amazing Love Ministries. Japanese women who suffered kidnapping will attend dressed in traditional Japanese kimonos. 

Mrs. Selle says that the majority of kidnapping victims in Japan are women, which is the reason for holding the demonstration during Women’s History month. She also states that “thousands of Unification Church members, Jehovah's Witnesses, and other believers have suffered forced conversions in Japan during the last four decades. In many cases, women have been targeted for kidnapping, confinement and brutal treatment, not only to break their faith, but to force them to renounce their marriages to members of ethnic groups or nationalities considered undesirable by their relatives. Yet, the Japanese government has failed in its responsibility to punish the perpetrators.”

“In religious kidnapping, women and men are forcibly abducted and confined against their will for weeks, months or years, and subjected to nonstop, sometimes violent harassment in an attempt to de-convert them from their freely chosen faith,” Mrs. Selle has written in a letter of invitation to concerned women.

She also has called for a protest rally on the morning of March 22, 2011 across from the White House under the banner of “Stop Religious Kidnapping In Japan.” The keynote speaker at the rally at 11 a.m., March 22nd in Lafayette Park will be the Reverend In Jin Moon, National Pastor of Lovin’ Life Ministries and CEO of Manhattan Center Studios. The rally will call attention to the neglected human rights of some 4,300 women and men who have been subjected to religious kidnapping as well as mental and physical torture in Japan.