Human Rights News - Church of Scientology Human Rights Department

April, 2005

Making human rights a fact

Scientologists safeguard human rights through a popular campaign to raise awareness of every person’s fundamental freedoms — no matter their culture, class, color or creed

The six-year-old boy sits outside the psychologist’s office. Afraid, he wonders whether he has done something wrong. He wishes his mother could be present, but the psychologist had said no, claiming she might influence the outcome of the test he is to have.

The boylet’s call him Janis summoned into the office. The psychologist holds up a piece of paper and asks a question in Czech. Jan speaks very little Czechat home his family converses in Romani.

The psychologist repeats the question and Jan realizes the man is asking him what color the paper is. He searches for the right word in Czech, finally saying, “Blue.” The psychologist puts down the paper, correcting Jan coldly: “It is dark blue.”

Based on this question in an interview of less than five minutes, the psychologist pronounces Jan “mentally disabled” and assigns him to a school for the mentally handicapped. He will thereafter be stigmatized as “retarded,” effectively denying him the opportunity to higher education.

Young Jan’s case is not an isolated one. In fact, more than 70 percent of Roma children in the Czech Republic are falsely labeled by psychiatrists or psychologists and sent to “remedial special schools.”

In many cases, the only basis is a brief interview and superficial testing, such as Jan encountered. The pattern is the same in other Eastern and Central European countriesHungary, Bulgaria, Croatia, Poland, Romania, Serbia and Montenegro, Slovakia and Slovenia.

The false labels destroy hope for a brighter future. Those so labeled are condemned to low-paying, menial jobsif they can find work at all.

With income levels below the poverty threshold, many Roma families are forced to live in shelters and ghettos. There, schoolteachers lack basic qualifications. The textbooks they teach from in their often-squalid quarters are woefully substandard and out of date. Thus, says Dr. Dimitrina Petrova, founder and executive director of the European Roma Rights Center (ERRC) in Budapest, “the vicious circle of ostracism is perpetuated, creating a virtual caste system in our midst and condemning thousands of Roma children to continue in degradation.“

That oppression, more often than not, goes unseen. The young Roma boys and girls stigmatized with dubious psychiatric labels are then subjected to mind-altering drugs and other psychiatric savageryvictims of assaults you wont see listed among the 7,423 abused children reported as crime victims last year.

Human rights leadership

Dr. Dimitrina Petrova accepts her award

Among those leading the crusade to remedy such injustice and bring equal opportunity to people whose rights have been suppressed are Dr. Petrova and the ERRC. From their international headquarters on Nyar Street in Budapest, the ERRC monitors Roma rights violations often overlooked by government officials in many countries.

Dr. Petrova, a member of the Bulgarian Parliament in 1991, contributed to the drafting of that nation’s constitution, ensuring that human rights were enshrined in this document to provide a foundation upon which a genuine democracy could be built. She has forwarded Roma rights in more than 75 publications and at over 70 human rights conferences and events, where she has often been keynote speaker.

It is in no small measure through these efforts that a long-oppressed people have had their cause placed at the top of the agenda of European institutions. In April this year, the European Court of Human Rights took up her organization’s challenge to the systematic racial segregation and discriminatory treatment of Roma children in Czech schools. The European Union, meanwhile, in discussing the inclusion of Romania and Bulgaria, was at the same time calling for fair treatment of Roma as a key condition for entry.

Because of these landmark accomplishments, a result of Dr. Petrova’s steadfast work on behalf of human rights, the Church of Scientology’s European Freedom Magazine, awarded Dr. Petrova its Human Rights Leadership Award in Brussels on April 20, 2005.

Before an audience of ambassadors, MEPs, diplomats, representatives of different religious communities and human rights activists, Dr. Petrova accepted the award, stating, “I take this award to signify solidarity with the values and principles by which I have worked for human rights. By making human rights, freedom and equality central to its message and its practical efforts, the Church of Scientology has provided a positive example for other religions and faith based organizations.

“This award is of particular value to me,” she said in acceptance, “because Freedom Magazine has been guided by the same principles which I have tried to follow: Independence of thought and research, relentless exposure of human rights abuses wherever that happens, open-mindedness, commitment to truth and full respect for the free will of persons whose rights are at stake.“

Church’s human rights mission

Long committed to safeguarding every individual’s human rights, members of the Church of Scientology in Hungary are often asked to present informational programs alongside Dr. Petrova and other leading humanitarians at major forums. Last February, for example, Scientologists were called upon to host a special workshop on human rights education for youth at the European Network Against Racism’s symposium on “The Phenomena of Racism in the New EU Member States” in Budapest.

The focus of that presentation was the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and its application, says Laszlo Sohajda, human rights director for the Church of Scientology in Budapest.

Also of major concern to Scientologists in Hungary and throughout the world is the trafficking of ethnic minority youth for sexual exploitation, a major child abuse problem, according to both governmental and NGO sources. While no exact accounting exists for the number of trafficking victims moved through the country over any given period, these sources estimate that nearly 3,000 people — mostly females between the ages of 13 and 27 — are transported to and through Hungary each year as sex slaves.

This common interest over human rights issues resulted in the launch of initiatives to teach these rights to Roma youth, Sohajda explained. In April, at a Roma Human Rights conference in Budapest attended by Dr. Petrova, the What Are Human Rights? youth booklets were presentedand put to immediate use.

What are Human Rights? published by Youth for Human Rights International, contains a child-friendly version of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

The booklets are produced in 21 languages by Youth for Human Rights International (YHRI), a worldwide advocacy group for youth established under the auspices of the Church of Scientology International’s Human Rights Department. They contain a simplified version of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Its child-friendly depictions and descriptions of the UDHR’s fundamental principles has proven instantly popular with teachers, parents, government officials and community leaders — not to mention the children themselves.

Sohajda explained the importance of these publications in light of human rights concerns in Hungary: “The human rights abuses of psychiatric profiling and sexual slavery not only avoid the headlines, they are crimes for which the child serves the sentenceor pays the penaltywith their lives,” he said.

But, you may well ask, how can these plights be toleratedor worse, go unnoticed?

Sohajda points to a survey last year that shows a general unawareness of the basic human rights violated in such cases. Only 10 percent of the 600 Hungarians questioned could paraphrase more than a few basic human rights as enumerated in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the guiding beacon for every individual’s fundamental freedoms.

“Unfortunately,” said Sohajda, “the individual who is unaware of his or her human rights is most likely to be victimized by discriminatory hiring practices, intolerance toward ethnic origins or religious beliefs, or outright aggression against physical, emotional or mental well-being.”

Clearly, these human rights champions see their events and publications as just a beginning. And in the past year, Youth for Human Rights International has added a powerful tool through which it reaches youth in Hungary and around the world with its messages of tolerance and respect to: a highly acclaimed human rights music video, called “United.”

Winner of the prestigious New York Independent Film Festival’s Grand Jury Award for Best Short Film for 2005, “United” was unveiled in Budapest at aHuman Rights Day tribute on Nyugati Square’s Media Screen on December 10, 2004. It has since appeared on television screens and in movie theaters throughout Central Europe and in 15 languages around the world.

Demand for that message reaches far and wide. The Czech Republic’s music video station is now airing the Czech subtitled version, while in Macedonia, 10 television stations present the video in Macedonian as a regular public service announcement. And, said Sohajda, Tinseltown TV, which airs in 130 countries, including Hungary and most of Central Europe, also regularly broadcasts “United.“

For information on the “United” video and Youth for Human Rights publications, go to www.youthforhumanrights.org