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President of French anti-religious organization MIVILUDES convicted by Criminal Court of Paris |
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Thursday, 28 June 2012 14:50 |
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Georges Fenech, the president of French anti-religious organization MIVILUDES (an acronym for Mission interministérielle de vigilance et de lutte contre les dérives sectaires – Interministerial Mission for Monitoring and Combatting Cultic Deviances), was convicted for public defamation by the Paris criminal court on June 1, 2012 .
The defamation case started because of a defamatory accusations against lay Catholics association called French Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property (TFP) whiuch were published in the 2009 annual report of MIVILUDES.
The 17th Chamber of the Criminal Court of Paris, specializing in cases concerning the press, stressed the lack of accuracy in the report as well as the lack of restraint in its expressions. The court also emphasized that a state agency such as MIVILUDES should not use vague approximations in its work.
Both George Fenech and MIVILUDES have earned an international reputation for repressing religious minorities and violating the European Convention on Human Rights. By being convicted of public defamation, George Fenech has tarnished his name – and the reputation of MIVILUDES.
Central-European Religious Freedom Institute congratulates the Paris Criminal Court for convicting Fenech – and in so doing, taking a step forward in advancing the rights of religious minorities in France.
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Posted courtesy Forum for Religious Freedom Europe http://foref-europe.org/
Source: CERF Institute http://cerf-institute.org/ |
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The Problem with European 'Human Rights' |
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 By Jacob Mchangama and Aaron Rhodes
Last week ministers from the Council of Europe met in Brighton to consider British proposals on reforming the European Court of Human rights. The meeting concluded with agreements for timid tweaks to the tribunal, but didn't touch the serious problems it faces. This is not surprising, given that the court's judges and leading human-rights organizations are all resistant to meaningful change. But it is disappointing, because the same problems that hobble the European court in Strasbourg are endemic throughout the rest of the international human-rights machinery.
The U.K. failed to achieve fundamental reform in part because it did such a poor job of articulating the urgency of the task. Conservative leaders and pundits chafe under the court's rulings that they consider intrusive, for instance its judgments constraining how Britain may deal with terrorists. The British proposals focused on making the court more deferential to the rulings of national courts, and thus fed the impression (however unfair) that they were driven solely by concerns over sovereignty rather than principle. Proponents of the court counter that shortening its reach or weakening its independence would harm its ability to address serious human-rights violations in Russia and other non- or partly free members of the Council of Europe.
The president of the court, British Judge Sir Nicholas Bratza, said reform was unnecessary and has criticized the U.K.'s modest proposals as an attempt to "dictate" the tribunal's case law. As evidence that some reform is clearly necessary, Westminster points to a backlog of more than 150,000 dockets. But according to Mr. Bratza, the solution is more financial resources, not changing the way the court operates. Major nongovernmental human-rights organizations have piled on against the reform proposals, arguing that the case overload only confirms the need for the court's work.
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Report calls for greater protection of religious minorities, stronger US role |
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In its second annual report on Minority Religious Communities at Risk, published March 15, the First Freedom Center calls for a renewed US focus on religious freedom and the protection of vulnerable minority faith communities throughout the world.
The report also calls for an enhanced role for the Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom at the Department of State, having the Ambassador report directly to the office of the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, It also asks for State to review annually and jointly with the Ambassador-at-Large, the conditions of “Countries of Particular Concern (CPCs),” countries identified as major violators of religious freedom by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF). The review would identify means of leverage to improve such countries’ freedom-of-religion performance.
You can download the report here
The First Freedom Center, founded in 1984, is a non-profit, non-denominational NGO whose mission is “to advance the fundamental human rights of freedom of religion and freedom of conscience.” Headquartered in Richmond, Virginia, but active nationally and internationally, it takes as its points of origin the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom of 1786, the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. |
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ICRF urges US Commission to Expand Its Focus |
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The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), a federal government commission that monitors global religious freedom, has just released its 2012 Annual Report on the state of religious freedom around the world. The report recommended that Secretary of State Clinton name the following nations “countries of particular concern” or CPCs: Burma, China, Egypt, Eritrea, Iraq, Iran, Nigeria, North Korea, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam.*
USCIRF also announced that the following countries are on its 2012 Watch List: Afghanistan, Belarus, Cuba, India, Indonesia, Laos, Russia, Somalia, and Venezuela. Watch List countries, according to USCIRF, "require close monitoring due to the nature and extent of religious freedom violations these governments have engaged in or tolerated."
ICRF, which reports on religious freedom in more than 90 countries worldwide, has encouraged the USCIRF to expand its report to stress not only countries of particular concern, but also those nations which are more likely to respond to outside influence.
"Why not increase coverage of those nations whose violations are not so egregious but which actually listen to the United States?" said ICRF president Dan Fefferman. "Countries like Kazakstan, Austria and Japan, for example, should not get a free pass from USCIRF," said Fefferman.
The report can be found here |
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Study: Tokyo gas attacks eroded Japan’s religious freedom |
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One of Britain’s leading scholars in Japanese studies, Professor Ian Reader of the University of Manchester, has just released a study examining the detrimental effects on religious freedom brought about by the 1995 sarin gas attacks on the Tokyo Subway.
According to the paper, the attacks, carried out by the Aum Shinrikyo group and which killed thirteen people, led to an anti-cult campaign by a ‘rampant and unrestrained media’ buoyed by right wing politicians, obsessing on ‘brainwashing’ and ‘mind control.’
Says Reader: “Since 1945, Japan’s laws on religion were designed to protect against those very aspects of state power that damaged it in the 1930s and 1940s, and to increase freedoms and enhance democracy."
“So it is worrying and ironic," according to Reader, that Japanese authorities have since the attacks "sought to exert more control over religions that appeared to deviate from Japanese norms."
"Harassment and discrimination is now not uncommon in religious contexts in ways that were not common in Japan between 1945 and 1995, reports Reader. “The fact that one religion used weapons of mass destruction and committed terrible crimes, has led to all religious groups."
“The concept of ‘mind control’ controlled by ‘evil gurus’ has helped to deflect this questioning and evade the deeper debates and examinations that otherwise would be required,"
Professor Reader contributed an introduction to the recently released study by Human Rights without Frontiers (HRWF) on the abduction and faith breaking of Unificationists in Japan.You can read the report at this link
Prof. Reader’s study can be viewed by clicking here
This paper was published by RadicalisationResearch.org which "provides policymakers, journalists, and anyone whose work utilises concepts such as radicalisation, fundamentalism or extremism, with easy access to high-quality academic research on these controversial issues. It is sponsored by the AHRC/ESRC Religion and Society Programme and takes a non-partisan approach to highlighting the best, including latest, work in this field." |
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