Controversial cult guru denounces UN, proposes alternative forum

Nepal News/November 23, 2005

A controversial cult guru, Dr Sun Myung Moon, has denounced the six-decade old international body, the United Nations, and announced the launching of an alternative forum to be known as Universal Peace Federation (UPF).

Addressing a select gathering of senior politicians, professionals, businessmen and his followers at the Birendra International Convention Centre (BICC) in Kathmandu on Tuesday, Dr Moon said the UN had not achieved the desired success in maintaining peace around the world and said the UPF had been conceived with the objective of working concurrently with the UN to move head for ushering in peace across the globe.

The 85-year-old cult guru, hailed as ‘messiah’ by his followers, is currently on a tour of 100 cities in 67 countries in a peace mission. He appealed the Nepalis to support in his ongoing efforts in establishing what he called true families, true societies, true nation and a true world where peace reigned supreme.

Hundreds of his followers and organizers of the conference welcomed Dr Moon and Mrs Hak Ja Han Moon when they arrived in Nepal for the first time on Tuesday.

Addressing the high-profile gathering, Dr Moon said, “Peace starts at home, familial peace is the most important thing to ensure peace in the community, country and the world.

He said that extreme selfish individualism threatens our prosperity even today. “We deem young people to be the hope of humanity holding the promise for the future, but drugs and free sex enslave them”, he said. He said that the best way to receive the Holy Blessing was with someone from another race, nationality or religion.

He called on exchange marriage that will contribute to enormous task of transcending the barriers of race, culture, ethnicity and religion and creating one family of human kind. He said God does not stand behind the barriers of religion and culture. He called upon exchange marriage among people of all races to live as one human family.

Dr Moon said false love, false life and false lineage infested the earth. God’s love, life and lineage had fallen into the hands of the adulterer Satan, the enemy of love. Heaven and earth were suffocated and transformed into hell.

He said he was directing efforts at completing the Bering Strait project that would connect North America with the Russian Federation.

The time has come for the countries of the world to pool their resources and advance towards the world of peace desired by God, he said. The humanity is traveling down a dead-end street and the only way to survive is to practice the peace philosophy of true love, true life and true lineage.

Born in Japan-occupied Korea, Moon converted to Christianity when he was 10-years-old. Subsequently Korea's communist government sent him to the infamous Heung-Nam labour camp, where prisoners were worked to death.

Though freed when the camp fell to UN troops in 1950, Moon was expelled from the Presbyterian church and formed his own organisation.

When he was 40 and after a divorce, he married Hak Ja, the teenaged daughter of the church cook, going on to have 14 children.

Moon went to the US in 1965 and got into trouble with the authorities.

He served two stints in federal prisons and, in 2000, was barred admission to Britain. He has also been convicted in Japan, where `Moonies’ – the followers of Dr Moon-- are said to have defrauded thousands of believers, besides the European Union

Dr Moon heads the Unification Church founded by him in 1954

Addressing the function in Kathmandu, Speaker of the dissolved House of Representatives Taranath Ranabhat said true love was the main harbinger of peace at the time when the world had been facing challenges of wars due to poverty and gap between haves and haves not.

He said that the powerful message of Dr Moon had given a hope for restoration of peace and harmony in Nepal and around the world.

The conference was organised by the Inter-religious and International Federation for World Peace .