The Criminal Investigation Bureau late last month raided the premises of a religious group, labeled a cult by investigators, in Taichung where it rescued 19 people who had allegedly been held against their will by the group’s founder, it said in a news conference on Wednesday.
Few would disagree that cults can be harmful and should be investigated by the authorities, but what is the definition of a cult, what makes one bad and why do people join them?
Let’s take Falun Gong as an example. Classified as a cult in China, Falun Gong is not considered such in any other country where it is practiced. It is based on qigong — which focuses on the breath and coordinated body movements — but former Chinese president Jiang Zemin (江澤民) outlawed it as an “evil cult,” because it threatens the ideological dominance of the Chinese Communist Party.
Some might define the Taichung group disbanded in last month’s raid as a cult because members were allegedly beaten, but it should be mentioned that flagellation is practiced in many traditions.
Those at some Christian monasteries and convents practice “mortification of the flesh.” Some Shiite Muslims also whip their backs with chains and sharp objects such as knives during the Day of Ashura, to commemorate the Battle of Karbalah and the martyrdom of Imam Hussein. Even in Taiwan, the practice of folk religions sometimes involves spirit mediums called jitong (乩童), who sometimes beat themselves with sharpened objects to demonstrate that a spirit has entered their body.
Is holding people against their will grounds for defining a group as a cult and forcing its disbandment? It might also be possible to challenge this thinking, as, for example, those rescued in Taichung told investigators that they believed the group’s reported founder — a woman surnamed Lin (林) — sought to help them. They believed they were possessed by spirits that Lin could expel.
These people seem to have been indoctrinated, but by what criteria can that judgement be made? Most religions believe in spirits and some believe in possession, so how can these victims’ claims about being possessed be so easily dismissed?
A Guardian article on May 27, 2009, said that psychiatrist and former Harvard professor Robert Jay Lifton defined a group as a “cult” based on three criteria: Cults often have charismatic leaders who have “no meaningful accountability,” have a process of indoctrination and “thought reform” and practice economic, sexual or some other form of exploitation.
Cult leaders are often convicted on charges unrelated to the offenses that they are alleged to have committed — possibly the result of the followers’ indoctrination or the prosecutors’ lack of evidence to formulate a case.
The job of the authorities is to determine when to pursue charges. They also face the challenge of determining what should be protected under religious freedom and what constitutes a malicious organization.
Dissuading would-be members might be the best way of preventing the growth of a cult — but why do people join cults?
An article on the Web site Insider in March last year said that few people consciously join a cult, but are rather drawn in as they seek answers to life’s greatest questions. “By the time people figure out what they’ve actually bought into, their whole life is committed to serving the cult community,” it added.
The best that authorities can do then is to widely publicize the availability of counseling services to the public. At the very least, people should know that hurting themselves, abandoning friends and family and handing over their savings to such organizations is not in their best interest.
The EU’s biggest banks have spent years quietly creating a new way to pay that could finally allow customers to ditch their Visa Inc and Mastercard Inc cards — the latest sign that the region is looking to dislodge two of the most valuable financial firms on the planet. Wero, as the project is known, is now rolling out across much of western Europe. Backed by 16 major banks and payment processors including BNP Paribas SA, Deutsche Bank AG and Worldline SA, the platform would eventually allow a German customer to instantly settle up with, say, a hotel in France
On August 6, Ukraine crossed its northeastern border and invaded the Russian region of Kursk. After spending more than two years seeking to oust Russian forces from its own territory, Kiev turned the tables on Moscow. Vladimir Putin seemed thrown off guard. In a televised meeting about the incursion, Putin came across as patently not in control of events. The reasons for the Ukrainian offensive remain unclear. It could be an attempt to wear away at the morale of both Russia’s military and its populace, and to boost morale in Ukraine; to undermine popular and elite confidence in Putin’s rule; to
A traffic accident in Taichung — a city bus on Sept. 22 hit two Tunghai University students on a pedestrian crossing, killing one and injuring the other — has once again brought up the issue of Taiwan being a “living hell for pedestrians” and large vehicle safety to public attention. A deadly traffic accident in Taichung on Dec. 27, 2022, when a city bus hit a foreign national, his Taiwanese wife and their one-year-old son in a stroller on a pedestrian crossing, killing the wife and son, had shocked the public, leading to discussions and traffic law amendments. However, just after the
With escalating US-China competition and mutual distrust, the trend of supply chain “friend shoring” in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and the fragmentation of the world into rival geopolitical blocs, many analysts and policymakers worry the world is retreating into a new cold war — a world of trade bifurcation, protectionism and deglobalization. The world is in a new cold war, said Robin Niblett, former director of the London-based think tank Chatham House. Niblett said he sees the US and China slowly reaching a modus vivendi, but it might take time. The two great powers appear to be “reversing carefully
RSS