Statement of Bruce Casino, Esq.,
President, International Coalition for Religious
Freedom
Capitol Hill Briefing Sponsored by The Institute on Religion and Public Policy
July 13, 2000
The International Coalition for Religious Freedom is a non-profit, non-sectarian, educational organization dedicated to defending the religious freedom of all, regardless of creed, gender or ethnic origin. ICRF acknowledges with gratitude that it receives the bulk of its funding from institutions and individuals related to the Unification Church community. I regularly represent the Unification Church on religious freedom issues in my legal practice. ICRF’s website at religious freedom.com is a leading religious freedom website with information on the status of religious freedom in over 100 nations.
In 1998, ICRF sponsored four major international conferences on the subject "Religious Freedom and the New Millennium." One of these conferences, held in Berlin, dealt especially with religious freedom in Europe. The proceedings of the conference have been recently published, and copies of that volume are available for your reference. Papers from these conferences can also be obtained by visiting our homepage.
The nation of France can be justifiably proud of the contribution it has made to the cause of liberty. Today, however, that same nation is about to implement the most repressive law against religious freedom in Western Europe since the end of WWII. Others will speak in detail about the particulars of this legislation.
Allow me to mention just a few concerns with the proposed legislation. The first article allows for a civil proceeding to dissolve an organization. This action can be brought not just by the prosecutors but by "anyone having an interest." This would allow any bigoted individual or group to harass any organization and potentially drive them into dissolution.
Article 9 would eliminate virtually all evangelism or proselytizing by targeted groups since it prohibits "disseminating by whatever means" messages to young people by those groups. Under this provision, no radio, television, internet, leafleting or door to door evangelism by such a group would be possible since these methods of sharing one’s faith might reach a young person.
Article 10, making a crime of "mental manipulation" can provide the criminal prerequisite for the Article 1 dissolution and punishes by up to 5 years in prison the use of repeated pressure to cause a person, whether the person agrees or not, to do an act which is "heavily detrimental" to that person as judged by the state. Thus, a Unification Church pastor or, for that matter, the pastor of a Catholic Church, who convinces a person to give up their job to pursue a life in the ministry, could be criminally convicted. Of course, only small groups like the Unification Church will be prosecuted. As I believe Tom Wolfe said, "A cult is any religion which has no political power."
The preamble to the legislation in fact makes clear that the legislation is aimed at new and small religious groups. It would, by its terms, however, give enormous discretion to prosecutors and civil litigants to go after and seek to dissolve religious organizations but also political parties, trade unions and other entities that call for contributions or volunteer efforts by their members.
I will leave to others a detailed exposition of the violations of international human rights law the above provisions implicate.
Having returned from a fact-finding trip to France on behalf of the Unification Church just two weeks ago, what I would like to contribute today is a summary of France’s treatment of the Unification Church and its members over the past few years. This should help give an understanding of why we feel so urgently threatened by the current legislation.
The French philosopher, Sartre, wrote that "Hell is the other." This seems to be the attitude of the French Government toward new religions in France. This legislation is part of a phenomena of "sectaphobia" running rampant in France.
As discussed, the new French law calls for the legal total annihilation of any "sect" that has been, or whose leaders have been, convicted of more than one crime. Future convictions on the newly created charge of "mental manipulation" would qualify the UC to be legally banned in France. Members who continue to propagate the Church’s doctrines by such activities as preaching, teaching, publishing literature, or organizing public meetings could be found guilty of attempting to reconstitute a banned sect and be subject to three years in prison.
We have good reason to believe that we may be a specific target of the current law. An article in the Guardian of London June 14, 2000 refers specifically to the French government’s "shock" at president Clinton’s support for the rights of Unificationists and Scientologists. The Unification Church is often mentioned in short lists of the major "sects" in France, together with others such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Church of Scientology. Rev. and Mrs. Moon have been banned from entry into France and listed by the French as "dangerous persons" under the terms of the Schengen Treaty. The UC is among the 172 "dangerous sects" listed by a French Parliamentary report. Shortly after this report was issued, the Unification Church headquarters in Paris was bombed. Hotels where we planned public meetings have been pressured by police and anti-sect organizations to cancel the meetings. Members face job discrimination, children are forced to listen to teachers paid by the members’ taxes ridicule their church and identify it as a "dangerous sect" in the public schools, and members even fear to express their opinions to their elected representatives for fear of being blacklisted. Here are some specifics:
France has banned both Rev. and Mrs. Moon from entering the country, and has listed them as dangerous persons under the terms of the Schengen Treaty. Rev. and Mrs. Moon first learned of the ban during their international speaking tour in 1995. Under terms of the Schengen agreement, they were banned in almost every major European country because of the action of France and Germany to list them as "dangerous."
Ironically, the Schengen Treaty was created to ease travel restrictions among European nations. There is no evidence that Rev. and Mrs. Moon have ever caused public disturbances, nor are they the types of people—terrorists and drug dealers—that the Schengen Treaty was designed to exclude from free emigration. France’s travel ban against the Moons is no different in principle from the Chinese ban against the Pope or the Dalai Lama. It has no other purpose than to suppress and punish a minority faith. Moreover, the travel ban against the Moon’s is a clear violation of international agreements to which France subscribes. The Vienna Concluding Document of the Organization for Security and Cooperation (Section 32) requires signatory states to:
…allow believers, religious faiths and their representatives, in groups or on an individual basis, to establish and maintain direct personal contacts and communication with each other, in their own and other countries, inter alia, through travel, pilgrimages, and participation in assemblies and other religious events.
Moreover, Comment No. 22 (1993) of the UN's Human Rights Committee clarifies that:
Article 18 [guaranteeing religious freedom in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights] is not limited in its application to traditional religions or to religions and beliefs with institutional characteristics or practices analogous to those of traditional religions. The Committee therefore views with concern any tendency to discriminate against any religion or belief for any reasons, including the fact that they are newly established, or represent religious minorities that may be subject of hostility by a predominant religious community.
In 1996, the French Parliamentary Commission on Sects, charged with assessing potential dangers to French society posed by religious sects outside of the mainstream, issued a report identifying the Unification Church among 172 dangerous "sects." The report has been seriously criticized by scholars and mainstream religious leaders alike, as I am sure others here will discuss. It has also resulted in real harm to the UC and its members.
This report was followed by a front cover negative article within days in the national weekly magazine, Le Point, declaring that "it is open season on the cults" and that "something must be done about sects." A few days later, at 4 a.m., on Monday, January 29, the Unification Church headquarters in Paris was firebombed. Damage was approximately $60,000. Fortunately, no one was injured.
The government itself has used the report to justify its repression of the UC. In the Church’s appeals seeking to overthrow the government’s listing of Rev. and Mrs. Moon as "dangerous persons" under the Schengen Treaty, the Parliamentary Report was cited as an authority justifying the ban. On October 20, 1998, the President of the CNIL (National Commission for Information and Liberty) wrote the following:
"Mr. Moon affirms that the fact that a person’s belonging to a religious organization cannot be a valuable reason to record this person in the Schengen Information System and that his presence on the national territory does not threaten the public order.
"But, according to the Parliamentary Report on Sects (report n°2468) it appears that the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity cannot be considered as a religious organization and that it is a sect, as defined in this report, whose activity is threatening the public order…. So, it is not because he belongs to a religious organization, but because he belongs to a sect which can threaten the public order, that Mr. Moon has been filed in the Schengen Information System."
In several instances, the French police and semi-official anti-sect organizations have conspired to prevent the UC from carrying out lawful public meetings to express their religious views. For example according to Jean-Francois Moulinet, President of the UC of France:
Unificationists often fear the loss of their jobs if their religious affiliation is discovered. In one case, Mr. Jean-Philippe Odent, a member of the Unification Church since 1973, was suspended from his job for three months after anti-sectists reported to his employer his Internet activities in support of the UC, even though these activities were conducted on his personal computer at home. Members in the other professions have been forced to curtail their right to public religious expression as a result of this climate of fear. There are also reports that attorneys who seek to protect the religious liberty of minority faiths have been visited by government agents who threaten to pressure their other clients to find other lawyers.
The general climate in France makes membership in the Unification Church extremely difficult. Imagine the stigma of being a child in a nation where you are afraid to tell other children—or your teachers—what church you belong to. Imagine the shame and confusion when your parents marriage ceremony is pointed out for ridicule and the teacher refers to "Moonies" who are "brainwashed." Imagine the trauma of a mother whose son comes home having been beaten up because his parents are members of a "sect." One American woman told a colleague of mine that she is bringing her teenage son to the US for a visit this summer because "I want him to meet other UC kids—ones who don’t have to hide who they are like we do here." It is hard to imagine that this is happening in France today. But the sad truth is that there is more religious freedom for Unificationists today in Russia than in the land of liberty, fraternity and equality.
In conclusion, the Unification Church in France faces a serious problem of government-sponsored and government-encouraged suppression, intimidation, and intolerance. Already, serious violations of human rights have occurred as a direct result of the government’s policies. Given the current climate and the prospect of a new French law being used to place an outright ban against the Unification Church and imprison its members, we can only expect the situation to worsen considerably in the near future.