STATEMENT: The church announced its official position that Le Parisien distorted facts about Shincheonji France in an article published last week, only quoting speculative statements from someone who left the church. On the other hand the church’s statement made up only two lines of the report, barely reflecting the actual state of the faith community.

The article was titled “They Treated Us Like Animals” and defined Shincheonji Church of Jesus as one of the “problematic evangelical groups” in France based on the personal testimony of an anonymous former member.

Shincheonji France says, “the reputation of the church and its members has been seriously damaged”, with the article mentioning training camps, severing relationships, and demands for money.

But a church official criticized, “We faithfully submitted thousands of characters of written responses to the 12 questions the reporter had sent us in advance, but only two sentences were reflected in the main text of the article,” and “This is less than 1% of the total responses, which seriously limited the opportunity to convey a balanced perspective to readers.”

They also said, “Considering that the report was published just four hours after the responses were sent to the reporter, we could tell that it was a one-sided, targeted, slanderous article.”

They continued, “If the written response was insufficient, they (the reporter) could have visited the actual church to check the religious scene and directly heard the voices of the current believers,” adding, “the church is always ready to respond to open communication with the media.”

The church also provided heart-felt testimonies from believers who are currently practicing their faith at Shincheonji Church of Jesus.

Teresa (29), who has been attending the church in Paris for six years, said, “Faith is something that is done voluntarily. Here, I came to know God properly and learned how to act as a person of God and shine in the world.”

Another believer, Axel (30), said, “Before coming to Shincheonji Church, I was looking for the meaning of my life. Since I started believing in Shincheonji Church, I was able to realize what God wants, and I love doing God’s work. While doing my mission, I was able to go on trips that I like, and I was able to meet my wife at church. I am living a truly satisfying life.”

Even the title of the article itself sparked shock and embarrassment amongst the members, stating, “no one has ever been treated like that, and we do not think that way. It was just used as a sensational article title to attract attention”.
“In reality, we do not allow threats or stigmatization of those who have left the church, and a culture has been established that respects individual choices even after leaving the church.”

The church also refuted the claim that the former member “broke up with her boyfriend because of the church’s request,” saying, “It is not true.”

“The man in question (boyfriend) was a believer who attended the church with her at the time, and I understand that he wanted to get married. However, the woman said that she had no intention of getting married right away. The breakup was a decision made based on conversation between the parties and their personal religious concerns, and the church never induced or forced any choice.”

They emphasized that “dating and marriage are personal areas based on autonomy and responsibility, and it is not true to link this to the church’s control.”

The church also took issue with the fact that the article included situations that the interviewee had not actually experienced.

There was a photo used in the report of a person putting their feet on a radiator, and it was referred to as “corporal punishment”, but the photo had nothing to do with corporal punishment and was taken before the interviewee entered the church.

“The person in the photo is a man who is still a believer in the church, and at the time, he did that pose thinking that it was okay, and someone else took the picture for fun”, the church said.

The man in the photo was shocked to see it being used and plans to file an official complaint about it being used without his consent and for misconstruing its intention. 

The church stated, “It is very regrettable that the media cited and reported this statement without fact-checking, as it may give readers the biased perception that the entire Shincheonji Church of Jesus is an abnormal organization.”

Regarding the “training camp” mentioned in the article, the church explained, “the program was a short-term training program that some missionaries who hoped for religious growth participated in 100% voluntarily.”

“It consisted of morning prayers, meditation on the word and the person could stop the camp at any time. There was no physical punishment or coercion.”

“However, we are aware that there is room for misunderstanding from an outside perspective, and we are currently not operating the program.”

Regarding claims of collecting personal information, restricting internet use, and inducing severance of family relationships, the church stated, “This is completely untrue, and we do not collect anything other than the minimum information required for religious counseling.”

They emphasized, “We have never restricted internet use or external relationships, and rather, we encourage our members to live exemplary lives in their families and society.”

The report also accused Shincheonji France of using a false name, ECA Academy. But the church explained, “It was the name of a Bible education program temporarily used in 2019, and at the beginning of the class, we clearly informed that we were affiliated with Shincheonji Church of Jesus, and after that, the decision to join the church was completely up to the individual’s discretion.”

The church further requests media to;

-Carry out comprehensive coverage that reflects various perspectives and experiences, and sufficiently reflects the church’s official position and responses

-Provide fair reporting on the actual experiences and voices of currently active members

-Establish a reporting culture that respects religious freedom and the dignity of believers, and

-Refrain from promoting prejudice through provocative expressions and titles.

Church officials emphasized, “Biased reporting on a specific religion or religious community can result in imposing stigma and prejudice on good believers and undermining religious freedom and human rights,” and “the media should contain diverse voices based on balanced information and mutual respect, rather than provocative approaches that induce hatred.”

They continued, “We hope that all media, including Le Parisien, will maintain higher ethical standards and balance in religious reporting, and Shincheonji Church of Jesus will continue to do its best to help correct understanding through transparent communication and open dialogue.”

Gyeonggi Provincial Government’s Sudden Cancellation Raises Concerns of Bias and Violation of Rights

An administrative decision by a South Korean government agency sparked international controversy, raising concerns about religious freedom.

https://youtu.be/0V3nZDw1RzY

On November 27, religious leaders and opinion leaders delivered a joint protest statement to the Government of the Republic of Korea condemning the cancellation of the venue rental on October 29th as an act of biased religious oppression through public power.

Signed by 402 organizations, 758 religious representatives, and 977 individuals across the globe, totalling 1,735 signatories, the statement emphasized the psychological and financial damage caused to the international participants and highlighted the need for accountability.

On October 30 the “Religious Leaders Forum and Graduation Ceremony,” a joint initiative by two prominent religious organizations, was set to take place in Paju, South Korea. The event was expected to draw over 30,000 participants from 78 countries, including 1,000 religious leaders representing Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, and Hinduism.

However, the Gyeonggi Tourism Organization (GTO), a public entity under Gyeonggi Province, abruptly canceled the venue rental at 11am on the morning of the event, when preparations were already underway.

This decision, made without prior notice, has resulted in significant financial damage to the international event and its organizers. As the first clause of Article 20 of the South Korean Constitution states: “All citizens shall enjoy freedom of religion”, they argue that the cancellation constitutes an unconstitutional act of discrimination against a specific religion, violating religious freedom, human rights, and due process of law and an act that divides the people and divides the country into two.

The Joint Protest Statement demands accountability for this situation and calls for an official apology from the Gyeonggi Provincial Government and the Gyeonggi Tourism Organization to both domestic and international religious organizations and the global community.

It also requires the government to take appropriate disciplinary actions against the officials responsible for handling this matter and to strengthen fair and transparent venue reservation procedures and preliminary consultation systems.

Over 88 global leaders including international law experts, religious leaders, education experts, heads of organizations, journalists from around the world sent official documents and protest letters to the Republic of Korea upon hearing the news of the cancellation of the event, expressing shock and disappointment at this administrative action and demanding prompt and appropriate measures.

In particular, international law experts from around the world, including those with experience as prime ministers, vice ministers of justice, chief justices of the Supreme Court, presidents of the Constitutional Court, lawyers, and professors of international law, pointed out that the cancellation of the event on this day was an act that violated the Constitution, and religious leaders expressed concern that it was a biased decision and an anti-peaceful act that infringed on religious freedom.

Since November 15, religious leaders and members of Shincheonji Church of Jesus have held rallies outside the Gyeonggi Provincial Office and Gyeonggi Tourism Organization, condemning the biased cancellation urging the government to address the issue and take measures to prevent recurrence.

Timeline of Events Leading to the Cancellation
● July 22: Notification of approval for the rental from 29th to 31st October by GTO.
● October 2: Full payment of the rental fee.
● October 16: A working-level meeting held to discuss the event’s size, arrangements,
safety plans, and special effects. The GTO reviewed all details and completed a
safety inspection. While Paju City was designated a danger zone due to potential
North Korean provocations, officials assured organizers that this designation would
not impact the event.
● October 23 & 28: Officials confirmed twice that ‘there are no plans to cancel the
rental’.
● October 28: A rally was hosted by ‘SUGICHONG’, a Christian council of capital area
of Korea urging the cancellation of a venue rental.
● October 29: At 11 o’clock on the day of the rental while the event was being set up,
the Gyeonggi Province Governor Kim Dong-yeon unilaterally notified the
cancellation, citing security concerns related to recent North Korean actions and
activities by a North Korean defector group. Organizers allege that pressure from
opposing groups, including vested religious interests, influenced the decision.
● October 19-20, November 4: Notably, other events in the same area proceeded
without disruption.

See Also:

• Joint_Statement_of_Protest_to_the_Gyeonggi_Provincial_Governent part 1
• NewZealand.shincheonji.org/
• Facebook.com/nz.shincheonji/

AL JAZEERA – A three-year undercover operation by Al Jazeera has shown Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party lobbying the National Rifle Association of America (NRA) for millions of dollars to roll back Australia’s strict gun control laws.

* Australia’s One Nation Party Lobbying the National Rifle Association of America (NRA) for Millions of Dollars
* One Nation’s Chief of Staff, James Ashby, hoped to secure $US20 million political donations to “own the lower house and the upper house”.

The party vows to reverse laws banning automatic and semi-automatic weapons in Australia as it sought up to $US20 million in funding from members of the U.S. gun lobby.

The meetings between a delegation from One Nation with officials from the NRA and other pro-gun groups in America were covertly recorded by Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit as it followed One Nation on a visit to Washington, DC, in September 2018.

During that visit, Steve Dickson, the leader of the One Nation party in the Australian state of Queensland, told the NRA:

“If we don’t change things, people are going to be looking at Australia and go, ‘Well, it’s okay for them to go down the path of not having guns, it’s ok for them to go down that politically-correct path’. And it’s like a poison. It will poison us all unless we stop it.”

Laws banning automatic and semi-automatic weapons were introduced in Australia following a massacre there in the town of Port Arthur in 1996. The NRA has said it opposes the Australian gun laws.

New Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern announced the introduction a similar ban on all military-style assault rifles last week, following the attack on mosques in Christchurch that left 50 dead.

Dickson was accompanied on the U.S. visit by One Nation’s Chief of Staff, James Ashby, who was covertly recorded saying he hoped the trip would lead to him securing the $US20 million in political donations from pro-gun groups there.

“If you had 20, you would own the lower house and the upper house,” Ashby said, referring to Australia’s House of Representatives and Senate. Australia is expected to hold a federal election in May of this year. Dickson added: “You’d have the whole government by the balls.”

Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit infiltrated the U.S. gun lobby to find out how it operates. The unit engaged an Australian undercover reporter, Rodger Muller, to pose as the president of a pro-gun organisation, Gun Rights Australia.

Muller attended the U.S. gun lobby group meetings with Ashby and Dickson and was warned by Ashby to keep their discussions secret.

“We wouldn’t put it in writing. We keep everything out of writing,” Ashby said. “If this gets out, it will f**king rock the boat.”

Sunday, Jan 27, 2019 – The 2019 National Yearling Sales Series kicks off this afternoon seeing the first 100 yearlings catalogued in Book 1 go under the hammer from 3pm.

The Sale will be streamed live on www.nzb.co.nz, on the New Zealand Bloodstock facebook page, and on Karaka Pop Up (SKY Channel 263).

On all four days of Book 1, coverage will commence with a half-hour preview show before the live Sale broadcast begins.

Book 2 and Book 3 will be broadcast live online from 11.00am each day.

Racing.com will broadcast Book 1 on Free-to-air (Channel 68/78) and Foxtel Channel 529 on Monday 28 January, as well as streaming live on Racing.com.

All catalogues are available at reception or can be viewed online.

Visit www.nzb.co.nz for all Sale news and information.

Live stream of this event made possible by R2.co.nz

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is an unofficial English translation of the original French text.

***

Nowadays, the hardest challenges European countries confront are fighting against terrorist organizations such as DAESH and the management of migration flows. Turkey continues to hold an essential role within the context of international efforts in overcoming these challenges.

It is Turkey, who has enabled the European Union (EU) to regulate the Syrian migration flow. Turkey has not only hosted three and a half million Syrian refugees, but also saved the lives of thousands of people by halting their risky attempts to get across the Aegean Sea in order to reach Western Europe.

Turkey is one of the first countries to recognize DAESH as a terrorist organization. Moreover, our country is a member of the International Coalition, established to counter DAESH.

Whereas some Western countries have not been able to control even the transiting of jihadists through their airports, Turkey has denied the entry of more than four thousand suspected travelers on her territory; deported almost six thousand terrorists; arrested more than ten thousand DAESH and Al-Qaida members; and exerted great efforts to ensure the security of her 911 kilometers long land border with Syria.

While other coalition members have not gone beyond a very symbolic presence on the field, only Turkey has fought with her land forces against DAESH alongside with the Free Syrian Army since 2016. 

Operation “Euphrates Shield” is an exceptional -even unique- operation to serve as a model in this respect, which was directed by the Turkish Army and ensured the liberation of Jarabulus, Al-Bab and surrounding cities, as well as the peaceful return of hundreds of thousands of Syrians back home.

In that case, could we say that Turkey, against which the Europeans lean their back in terms of their security, is understood correctly? Could we say that our country’s actions are conveyed correctly and that they are appreciated? Unfortunately, this is not the case.

Anti-Turkey discourse prevalent in the West today, is a partial reflection of the increase in xenophobia and Islamophobia, which are fed by Western extremists’ instrumentalization of migrant flows. Furthermore, some unscrupulous politicians, with the goal of satisfying their voters, have tried to conceal their anti-Muslim and xenophobic messages, disguised as their “political truthfulness” in their opposition against Turkey’s EU accession.

This discourse also stems from those underestimating threats faced by Turkey in recent years, and blaming its leaders of becoming authoritarian, and violating individual rights in an unfounded way. However, which European country could have further respected these rights in the face of violent acts by terrorist organizations such as DAESH and PKK/PYD/YPG that have taken control of the frontier areas; the bloody coup attempt by Fethullah Gülen and his terrorist organization on 15 July 2016; the threats and challenges Turkey has faced, such as the economic and social burden of Syrian refugees at Turkish taxpayers’ expense? Actually, no country except for Turkey could have better dealt with such various challenges simultaneously.

Turkey, which is a founding member of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, is a party to the European Convention on Human Rights. This Convention guarantees that individual rights of all citizens are respected by also the Turkish Justice as in other European countries. Accordingly, no one could allege that these rights are less respected in Turkey than in any other country in Europe.

Thanks to its determination, Turkey today manages to prevent terrorist organizations such as DAESH or PKK/PYD/YPG from taking any action on her territory. Advances recorded in the fight against FETO will soon allow the Turkish Government to lift the state of emergency. One can recall that it took seven hundred and nineteen days to end the state of emergency in France.

Today, Turkey enjoys a sound political stability and has the highest economic growth rate among European countries. Turkey, welcoming nearly forty million tourists each year, also continues to be one of the world’s safest tourist destinations.

Turkey’s priority, as a country exerting every effort in finding a political solution in Syria, is to eliminate any terrorist presence on her border with this country, which also constitutes the border of Europe and NATO with the Middle East.

Operation “Olive Branch” conducted in Afrin against the PKK/PYD/YPG and their associate DAESH, will therefore continue until this goal is fully achieved. At all costs, Turkey will not allow this terrorist organization to occupy Syrian territory on her borderline and will do her best to demonstrate the gravity of their mistake to her allies who falsely think that using PKK/PYD/YPG terrorists as mercenaries in their so-called fight against DAESH is a good idea.

Our allies will realize that Turkey is, and will remain, their best ally for the security of Europe and the region.

ANKARA, Turkey — The United States is bound to the Middle East by interests, but Turkey shares about 800 miles of border with Syria and Iraq alone. In this geography and beyond, Turkey and the United States share the goal of defeating terrorist organizations that threaten our nations.

Daesh (or the so-called Islamic State) has been our common enemy, and the victory against the group could not have been possible without Turkey’s active contributions. Those contributions continue even though the group has been defeated militarily in both Iraq and Syria.

The Turkish military was crucial in the liberation of the northern Syrian city of Jarabulus from Daesh in 2016. Turkey detained more than 10,000 members of Daesh and Qaeda affiliates, and deported around 5,800 terrorists while denying entry to more than 4,000 suspicious travelers. Daesh has lost territorial control in Syria and Iraq, but it still retains the capacity to inflict horrors. Turkish authorities recently carried out operations against Daesh cells and damaged its efforts to reorganize.

American officials have told us that the United States wants to remain engaged and needs boots on the ground in Syria to prevent the remnants of Daesh from regrouping. But fighting Daesh cannot and should not mean that we will not fight other terrorist groups in our region that which threaten our country and the security of our citizens.

An impasse has been created between us by the United States’ choice of local partner in this war: a group that the American government itself recognizes as a terrorist organization. The so-called People’s Protection Units, or Y.P.G., is simply the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party terrorist organization by another name.

The groups have adopted different names and developed convoluted structures, but that does not cloak their reality. They are led by the same cadres, train in the same camps, share organizational and military structures, and use the same propaganda tools and financial resources.

The Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or P.K.K., directs the Y.P.G., and the P.K.K.’s suicide bombers are trained in Y.P.G. camps in Syria. To our dismay, the Y.P.G./P.K.K. terrorists across our borders in Iraq and Syria are using weapons and training provided by the United States.

The weapons confiscated by our security forces from P.K.K. terrorists have also been significantly increasing in both numbers and sophistication. A NATO ally arming a terrorist organization that is attacking another NATO ally is a fundamental breach of everything that NATO stands for. It is a policy anomaly that needs to be corrected. We have no doubt that the United States will see the damage this policy is inflicting on the credibility of the NATO alliance and correct its policy by putting its allies and long-term interests first again.

American reliance on the People’s Protection Units is a self-inflicted error when the United States already has a capable partner in Turkey. Turkey, however, cannot afford to wait for eventual and inevitable course corrections. Paying lip service to understanding Turkey’s security concerns does not remove those threats and dangers.

In the recent weeks, Turkish authorities have documented an increase in threats posed by the Y.P.G. and Daesh encampments in Syria. Terrorists in the Afrin region in Syria were menacing the lives and property of both the people of the region and Turks along the border. We had to act, and so Turkey has launched Operation Olive Branch against the terrorists in Afrin.

The operation has a clear objective: to ensure the security of our borders and neutralize the terrorists in Afrin. It is carried out on the basis of international law, in accordance with our right to self-defense.

The targets are the terrorists, their shelters, their weapons and related infrastructure. The Turkish Army is acting with utmost precaution to avoid harming civilians. We have already intensified our humanitarian efforts substantially, setting up camps to help the civilians fleeing Afrin.

We are already hosting over three million Syrians, and Turkish humanitarian agencies are helping those who need our support. Turkey will continue the mission until terrorists are wiped out.

Turkey will not consent to the creation of separatist enclaves or terrorist safe havens that threaten its national security and are against the will of the Syrian people.

Turkey has already been active in every political process that seeks a solution to the quagmire in Syria. Maintaining the territorial integrity of Syria is key to the peace efforts. Clearing terrorists means opening space for peace. We strive for a future that is free of terrorist entities, imploding neighbors, wars and humanitarian calamities in our region. Turkey deserves the respect and support of the United States in this essential fight.