March 28, 2002

RESPONSE TO THE 2001 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE FRENCH “INTERMINISTERIAL MISSION TO FIGHT AGAINST SECTS”

The 2001 Annual Report of the French Interministerial Mission to Fight Against Sects (Mission Interministerielle de Lutte Contre Les Sectes—MILS) was released in February 2002. It is not, strictly speaking, a report at all, but a propaganda tract. It has all the characteristics of propaganda, by definition: “deceptive or distorted information that is systematically spread.” Alain Vivien, president of MILS, has weaved generalities, insinuations and mere assertions throughout the piece. A bizarre example: He declares that the U.S. State Department has been infiltrated by “sect” members who helped to write its 2001 International Religious Freedom Report on France.

MILS REPORT: PASSAGE OF THE “LAW TO REINFORCE PREVENTION AND REPRESSION OF SECTARIAN GROUPS”

Vivien opens by congratulating MILS on the passage in 2001 of the “Law to Reinforce Prevention and Repression of Sectarian Groups” – known as the About-Picard law. He claims that the French Parliament was almost unanimous in voting for this legislation. In fact, less than 3.5% of the elected representatives of the French Senate and National Assembly were actually present when the vote was taken. Few politicians truly support the legislation. But because Vivien and his cohorts have created a climate of religious McCarthyism in France, very few were bold enough to oppose it publicly.

Vivien states that the About-Picard law is a legislative initiative comparable to that in other European countries, but he gives only one example: Germany, which amended its Association Law in late 2001 to remove a clause that prevents the government from banning an organization claiming religious purposes. The comparison is a false one. The German legislation was designed to make it possible to ban terrorist organizations. Minister of Interior Otto Schilly, for example, made clear in his presentation to the German Federal Parliament’s Interior Commission that the target of this law is terrorism.

Religious leaders both inside and outside France and human rights organizations have condemned the French About-Picard law as repressive.

MILS REPORT: GOVERNMENT FUNDING FOR MILS HAS REDUCED

Vivien complains that government funding of MILS declined in 2001 and he hopes it will revert in 2002. This raises the question of how MILS’s budget is spent. As pointed out by a former colleague in the newspaper France Soir on December 22, 2000, Vivien spends a lot of time travelling. Who paid, for example, for the trip made by Vivien and his wife to attend a Beijing conference on “cults” in November 2000? If it was French taxpayers, then their money is going towards providing support for the persecution of religious minorities, including many Christian churches. Who paid for Vivien’s trip to Moscow in May 2001 to speak at another such conference, at which all 201 participants signed a document calling for legislation against, among others, Mormons, Scientologists, the Hare Krishna movement, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Sri Chimnoy, the Church Universal And Triumphant and the Falun Gong? Vivien has also travelled to Haiti, Poland, Cyprus, Greece, Hungary, Germany and other countries. Who paid for these trips?

On becoming head of MILS, Vivien became eligible for a range of attractive bonuses: $10,000 per month in addition to expenses, comfortable retirement plans, and since he declared in 1998 that his home had been “burgled”, the services of two bodyguards and an armored car with a driver.

Furthermore, as described in an October 19, 2001 article in the magazine, Le Point, Vivien’s position as head of MILS has resulted in massively increased funding for the anti-religion movement in France. One such organization, Center Against Mental Manipulation (CCMM), is headed by his wife, Patricia Casano. In contrast to her predecessor who had a regular job and was paid a nominal sum to cover expenses, Patricia Casano commands a salary of 14,000 francs per month, the salary level of the head of an administrative agency in France. With a regular cash flow secured, CCMM collected another nest egg from the public treasury: 4.5 million francs for an impressive new headquarters.

MILS REPORT: NEW CATEGORY OF “SECTS”

Vivien introduces a new, derogatory category of “sect”, wholly arbitrary and with no validation by sociologists. (Vivien even admits that MILS is the originator of this classification). What Vivien is doing is to invent a label that he can then attach to groups and their members whom he wishes to target. That, however, is a tactic with its own label: McCarthyism.

Senator Joseph McCarthy went after the free thinkers, the intellectuals and the Jews with one weapon: he accused them of being secret communists. His accusations led to blacklists in radio and TV industries, in many large and small corporations, in local governments, universities and public school systems. MILS has taken over the exact modus operandi of McCarthy, accusing companies, without any evidence, of being “infiltrated by sects”, resulting in their financial ruin. MILS’s 2001 report continues this tactic of hysterical accusations against companies operating in the field of computer software. Vivien’s allegation is even the same as the one used by McCarthy: that they are a threat to national security.

Ironically, McCarthy’s targets included the U.S. State Department. In 1950, he declared in a speech, “I have here in my hand... a list of names.” These were communists “working and shaping the policy of the State Department.” The MILS 2001 report accuses the State Department of being infiltrated by sect members who are shaping its annual reports on international religious freedom. Furthermore, the “anti-sect” network FECRIS, which, according to the MILS report, operates in close liaison with MILS, has declared that “to this day important European and world organizations such as the European Commission, the European Parliament, the Council of Europe, UNO, OSCE [are] often infiltrated by cults.”

The consequence of McCarthy’s tactics was wholesale dismissals and ruined lives. According to one U.S. senator, people were forced into conformity of thinking. Vivien’s tactics are producing the same result in France.

Many, including representatives of minority religions, have attempted to dialogue with Vivien, but have received no response. Criticisms by a man’s friends are more telling than those of his opponents, and the sharpest rebukes come from Vivien’s ex-colleagues. A number abandoned MILS in frustration because of Vivien’s autocratic manner and refusal to accommodate their points of view. His former associates say that he deserves the accusations he loves to hand out: manipulation, hushing up dissident voices and a refusal to tolerate criticism.

In the newspaper La Croix of March 18, 2002, ex-MILS member Daniel Groscolas grumbled that he wasted time and energy working with MILS and bemoans MILS’ practice of handling everything with penalties and expulsions. Le Point of October 19, 2001, quoted Jeanine Tavernier, former head of the “anti-sect” group Association for the Defense of the Family and Individual: “Alain Vivien has a tendency to want to rule everything.”

MILS REPORT: PUBLIC TRIBUNAL BY “THE COORDINATION OF ASSOCIATIONS AND INDIVIDUALS FOR FREEDOM OF THOUGHT” WAS ILLEGAL.

This coalition of minority religious and spiritual groups has been holding a series of public hearings at which members of minority religious members testify about the discrimination they have experienced. Prior to the first of these hearings, in March 2000, news of these abuses was completely suppressed in France. No other such forum exists to publicize these abuses in France, although they have been detailed in the U.S. State Department’s Annual Human Rights Reports, in complaints to the United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights and the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly, and in reports by media outside France.

At the first tribunal, in March 2000, Vivien and other human rights violators were invited to attend, but did not do so and instead issued a public statement attacking the hearing. MILS’s attempt to sue the Foundation for Religious Tolerance, which helped organize one of the hearings, is an effort to suppress the right to freedom of expression and opinion and to quash all criticism of MILS’ oppressive methods.

MILS REPORT: CHARITABLE ACTIVITIES BY GROUPS ARE TRANSFORMED INTO ATTEMPTS TO BENEFIT THE GROUP. MILS CITES SCIENTOLOGISTS’ ASSISTANCE RENDERED AT GROUND ZERO, NEW YORK.

Scientologists travelled from all over the world to provide support to the rescue efforts in New York and in Washington, D.C. following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Vivien was not at Ground Zero, New York; neither was anyone else from MILS, and they are not in a position to judge the quality of the help offered. The professionals who were there—emergency medical technicians, fireman, police officers, city officials and other volunteer organizations—were very grateful for the round-the-clock assistance the Church of Scientology’s Volunteer Ministers provided. They said so, orally and in writing, many times. It is very arrogant of Vivien to strike a pose of knowing better than the professionals what help they needed in the wake of the disaster.

MILS REPORT: CHURCH OF SCIENTOLOGY IS SEEKING DOCUMENTS ABOUT ITSELF (UNDER FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT) TO DESTABILIZE THE STATE

It is a paranoid mentality that sees a threat in efforts to use the Freedom of Information Act to uncover, and therefore obtain the ability to correct, false reports in government files.

Churches of Scientology have for several decades been a leading voice in calling for Freedom of Information legislation. In the United States, the Church earned a substantial reputation for its role in informing American citizens of their rights under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act. The Church published a handbook on how to use the Freedom of Information Act and distributed it to hundreds of thousands of citizens, making individual rights known and providing individuals with simple directions for using the Act. The Church also battled against unwarranted government secrecy in the courts, in the process establishing legal precedents empowering citizens to monitor their government. And when freedom of information legislation was passed in France, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Italy, Belgium and Germany, members of the Church there played an important role in bringing FOIA laws about.

Open government is one of the principles of democracy. Vivien is arguing for the very secrecy that he accuses others of practicing. What is it about his dealings with other branches of the French government that he does not wish to have revealed?

MILS REPORT: “SECTS” EXPLOIT THE JUSTICE SYSTEM THROUGH ITS APPEAL MECHANISMS AND SLOW PROCEDURE, AND USE THIS TO PUBLICIZE THEIR CAUSE

Vivien is arguing that minority religions and their members should not be permitted access to democratic procedures of remedying injustice. The justice system is the mechanism that democratic states have put in place to correct injustices without the violence and bloodshed of past ages. States that do not extend these rights to all their citizens soon degenerate into revolution and totalitarianism. As for groups seeking publicity, this is an exercise of their right to free speech. No due process, no right to a voice and no right of appeal are characteristics of totalitarian regimes. Vivien does not hesitate to spread his propaganda in the media—witness his calling a press conference to release his report—but wants to deny the right to free expression to the religious organizations he targets.

If the justice system can take years, that is not the fault of minority religious organizations. Vivien’s complaint that minority religions have the audacity to exercise their due process rights is not surprising: it is consistent with Senator Dinah Derycke’s statement in the French Senate on December 16, 1999 that denial of due process rights to minority churches was one of the aims of what later became the repressive About-Picard legislation.

CONCLUSION:

MILS 2001 annual report contains no serious research and is dishonest, distorted and insidious. It confirms the widely held view among advocates of human rights and religious liberty that MILS is an extremist organization creating religious intolerance.