Religious Freedom Alert: France
173 Religions Blacklisted (cont...)

Violates European Standards

A 1998 Swedish Parliamentary Commission found that “in France the state has on the whole made common cause with the anti-cult movement” and recommended instead a strategy of “creating a dialogue for mutual understanding” as “the only reasonable departure for a society wishing to act without infringing religious liberty.”

The French government’s stance also stands in sharp contrast to a January 2000 Interim Report on Religious Discrimination prepared at the direction of the British Home Office by the Religious Resource and Research Centre of the University of Derby. The British Report found that “in dealing with religions there are those who wish to separate out ‘acceptable’ world religious traditions from those religious groups known popularly as ‘sects’ and ‘cults’, or in less prejudicial academic terminology as ‘New Religious Movements.’ However, the rights which the Convention and the [Human Rights] Act convey apply equally to the beliefs of those within the so-called New Religious Movements.”

The existence of Vivien’s office violates guidelines laid down by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe In June 1999. The Assembly emphatically rejected the French approach because it offended fundamental human rights, noting that:

“Under Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights, states are prohibited from distinguishing between different beliefs and from creating a scale of beliefs which is, in our view, unacceptable. Merely making such a distinction would constitute a disproportionate violation of the freedom guaranteed by Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights because the very basis of this freedom is the absence of distinction between beliefs, which explains the state’s duty to maintain neutrality.”

Turning to a December 1996 Report of the Special Rapporteur on Religious Intolerance to the UN Commission on Human Rights, we again find France out of step with accepted human rights norms. The Special Rapporteur noted that new religions should enjoy the protections afforded to traditional religions and that “it is not the business of the State or any other group or community to act as the guardian of people’s conscience and encourage, impose or censure any religious belief or conviction.” The Special Rapporteur characterized the distinction between “sects” and “religion” as “too contrived to be real.”

Proposed Anti-Religion Bill

The most recent effort by Vivien and his cohorts is a repressive and dangerous bill designed to manufacture a means to ban minority religions in France.

The bill’s Preamble proclaims its discriminatory intent “to paralyse the activities of sect organisations.” No attempt is made to define a “sect"—a derogatory term, which, as we have seen, is applied in France to improperly classify 173 religious movements.

French Catholic and Protestant leaders have expressed concern that the bill could target their own churches and congregations. But one category of citizen expressly excluded from the bill is politicians. Were the bill applied to political parties, it could be used to shut them down. In fact, there have been no less than 150 convictions of political figures in France in the last few years—among them, two criminal convictions of Jacques Guyard, the Rapporteur of the original 1996 parliamentary commission. Guyard, a strong advocate of the proposed bill, was convicted of defamation for labelling the anthroposophy movement as a sect, and separately, of influence peddling, for which he received a one-year prison sentence and fine.

The proposed bill has now passed the National Assembly. Although the media reported that it passed “unanimously”, less than 20 members of parliament were present in the Chamber when the vote was taken. It will now go before the Senate.

Clearly, concerted action by individuals, human rights organizations and governmental bodies is needed to reverse the deterioration of human rights and democracy in France.

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