Human Rights News - Church of Scientology Human Rights Department

November 18, 2002

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Linda Simmons Hight

Media Relations Director

Phone (323) 960-3500

Fax (323) 960-3508

mediarelationsdir@scientology.net

FRANCE CRITICIZED IN COUNCIL OF EUROPE

Parliamentary Assembly concludes that France should reconsider law targeting religious minorities.

After a two-year investigation, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe has asked the French government to reconsider a controversial June 2001 law already condemned as repressive by international human rights organizations and religious leaders around the world.

The hotly contested legislation to “reinforce prevention and repression of sectarian groups” was enacted in June 2001, over intense opposition by the French Catholic and Protestant Churches, the Jewish and Islamic communities, fifty members of the Council of Europe, and leading French jurists. It provides for the dissolution of religious organizations found guilty of two or more relatively minor offences, either directly or by perceived leaders.

Martin Weightman, Human Rights Director of the Church of Scientology Europe, said he hoped that the French government will repeal the law, “The Council of Europe has issued a serious warning that the actions of the French government in passing this law pose a threat to democratic standards. I urge the new administration to heed this shot across the bows from Europe’s primary human rights body.”

After 40 minority organizations in France, mostly religious, filed a petition, the Assembly’s Legal Affairs Committee appointed rapporteur Mr. Cevdet Akcali to investigate religious discrimination in France in October 2000, while the law was still moving through the legislative process. Mr. Akcali’s report has just been completed and adopted by the Assembly.

The law is named “About-Picard” after the two French lawmakers who worked with Alain Vivien, former president of the French government’s “Interministerial Commission to Fight Against Sects” (MILS), to draft the legislation. Vivien, who resigned in June 2002, was criticized last month by the new French Interior Minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, for “behavior [that] aroused controversy that was in other respects counter-productive....” The Church of Scientology in France had earlier obtained MILS’s financial records, which showed that 16 MILS officials including Vivien made 88 trips to 43 countries from 1999 through 2001, in an effort to export the controversial French “model legislation.”

Those countries included China, whose government regularly cites French government actions against minority faiths to justify its brutal persecution of the Falun Gong and Christian movements. Human rights organizations have expressed concern that About-Picard is being used as a model by such states, which have a history of religious persecution.

As a result of the passage of the law, “Aid to the Church in Need”, an international Catholic charity operating under papal jurisdiction, added France to the list of countries with discriminatory legislation in its 2001 report. The U.S. State Department and the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom are also sharply critical of the law.

In the Resolution adopted today, the Assembly concludes that ultimately, should the case arise, the European Court of Human Rights will decide whether About-Picard is compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights. The Assembly reiterates its earlier position that alleged illegalities by members of religious organizations should be dealt with under normal procedures of civil and criminal law.