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COVID-19: An Excuse for Defamation? |
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by Michael Owens
Email: michaelowens (nospam) thepersecuted.org |
10 Aug 2020
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Since February 2020, controversy surrounding the religious minority group, the Shincheonji Church of Jesus Christ, involving Patient 31, a congregant member, has sparked a series of chaotic events spurred on by malicious slander and fear. Swayed by the tabloids, various political leaders have sought to bring legal charges against Shincheonji Church leaders and their Chairman, Mr. Lee Man-Hee, in an effort to gain the favor of the public. |
Since February 2020, controversy surrounding the religious minority group, the Shincheonji Church of Jesus Christ, involving Patient 31, a congregant member, has sparked a series of chaotic events spurred on by malicious slander and fear. Swayed by the tabloids, various political leaders have sought to bring legal charges against Shincheonji Church leaders and their Chairman, Mr. Lee Man-Hee, in an effort to gain the favor of the public.
Utilized as a pandemic scapegoat and defamed as a Korean cult by various news outlets and political leaders, the leaders of Shincheonji are currency facing charges regarding accusations of “willful negligence” and suspected tax evasion. As the fundementalist Protestant Churches, like the Christian Council of Korea, consistently slander against the minority religious group, they have shifted public opinion in their favor of blaming Shincheonji for the cause of the virus spreading. Yet, even before President Moon had issued an official declaration for all churches to stop meeting in person, the Shincheonji Church previously sent out a command for all members showing symptoms to not attend meetings in person. The same day, February 18th, that the leaders learned of Patient 31’s official diagnosis, they shut down all churches and meetings in the city of Daegu. Within the next couple of days, they halted all international meetings as well.
However, the Shincheonji Church’s cooperation with health officials went unnoticed as their delay in sending in a list of congregation members’ private information for tracking seemingly impacted the infection rate. Reasons for the delay largely involve the history of discrimination and harassment against members of Shincheonji, and many congregants expressed hesitation at having their information, such as addresses and phone numbers, released as it would potentially endanger their lives. For the past few months, nearly 6,000 cases of discrimination were reported in lieu of private information being leaked to the public. As thousands of congregation members are at risk of facing persecution for their religious beliefs, Chairman Lee Man-Hee and the other leaders of Shincheonji were late in submitting the list for the purpose of protecting lives.
The pastors of the Christian Council of Korea (CCK) defame the religious minority as a “cult” and “heretic” because of their rapid growth over the past few years. Tainting the reputation of the Church gives the CCK grounds to utilize coercive conversion programs on the members of Shincheonji. Coercive conversion, also known as “deprogramming”, involves the practice of kidnapping and utilizing mental and psychological abuse in an effort to dissuade the victim from carrying out their religious beliefs. While many free democratic countries, like Japan and the United States, have banned this inhumane practice, the Republic of South Korea continues to allow such violence to exist. With the current pandemic situation, the CCK is now using the virus to villify the Shincheonji Church and justify their heinous crimes against the congregation members’ basic religious freedoms. Nearly 12,000 of the pastors in the CCK have been previously convicted of crimes of violence and embezzlement, however, they are not held accountable for their actions against the Shincheonji Church today.
The former mayor of Seoul blatantly blamed and condemned Shincheonji Church and its leaders for allegedly causing the spread of the virus despite there being 30 confirmed cases of the virus known in South Korea beforehand. Former Mayor Park Won-soon largely advocated for women’s rights during his term as he believed in equal representation of the minority, however, his secretary then came forward with sexual assault allegations thereby bringing his entire career into question and further dividing the country. As a person of power who claimed to want equal representation was also quick to shift blame on a religious minority for causing a virus that did not originate in South Korea, is his judgement the standard of who is “guilty”? In a pandemic, the leader should be working to unite the citizens in an effort to halt the spread of the virus rather than support slander to cover his own misdeeds. Wouldn’t resources and time spent searching for a vaccine be more beneficial than defaming a church?
Regardless of the overwhelming amount of slandering from both news outlets and politicians, Chairman Lee Man-Hee, held a press conference in March 2020 humbly apologizing on his knees for the mistakes made in delaying the admittance of the list of congregants’ private information. Despite the Vice Minister of Health publicly declaring the Shincheonji Church’s cooperation with the authorities, the public was quick to jump on the bandwagon of using the religious minority group as a scapegoat rather than hold the Minister of Justice Cho Kuk and other government officials responsible for allowing the virus into the country earlier.
Currently, Chairman Lee Man-Hee and other leaders of Shincheonji Church are being accused of violating the disease control law and obstructing justice despite a public statement revealing the church did not attempt to obstruct. However, on August 1st 2020, Chairman Lee was detained as the judge was concerned with alleged evidence being destroyed, and the public feedback online responded with slew of comments sending death threats to Chairman Lee. With hate speech feeding into the fear and paranoia, the more communities are dividing as families are separated over conflicting individual religious beliefs. Meanwhile, the pastors of the CCK are encouraging families to pay their “deprogramming” businesses thousands of won to forcibly kidnap their loved ones and subject them to days of physical and psychological abuse to “save” them from a “cult”. If the pastors of the CCK and the politicians truly cared for the communities they represented, then they would promote a healthy and safe environment for discussion among the differing beliefs to find a peaceful solution to resolve the conflicts.
The current detainment of Chairman Lee does not mean he has received a guilty verdict. As time passes, the truth will certainly be unveiled, but until then the politicians and pastors of the CCK must be held accountable for their spiteful actions and malicious slander of this religious minority group. If they are to maintain the ideologies of freedom then they must recognize hate speech is not free speech. Thousands of lives are impeded by the defamation of their beliefs. Staying silent and turning a blind eye to the injustice and violation of human rights will only enforce and encourage the same behavior to other minority groups in the future. |
This work is in the public domain. |
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