Testimony by
The Reverend N. J. L'Heureux, Jr.
Executive Director, Queens Federation of Churches
Moderator, Committee on Religious Liberty of the
National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA
June 14, 2000

House International Relations Committee:
The Treatment of Religious Minorities in Western Europe

(cont...)

American signatories included Mr. Lee Boothby, International Commission for Freedom of Conscience in Washington, DC; Dr. Derek Davis, Director, J.M. Dawson Institute of Church-State Relations at Baylor University in Waco; The First Church of Christ, Scientist in Boston; Dr. Franklin H. Littell, Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Richard Stockton College in New Jersey; Dr. David Little of the Harvard Divinity School in Cambridge; Melissa Rogers, General Counsel of the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs in Washington and representatives of Christian, Muslim and Jewish faiths.

Such was the furor following publication of this Open Letter, however, that although France Soir had agreed to run the third Open Letter a week later, the paper not only went back on this commitment, but the Chief Editor publicly stated that he had published the Open Letter on April 20 by mistake. Subsequent attempts to place the third and final Open Letter in a range of French publications met with refusal at every turn. Therefore, the third Open Letter finally appears today, not in a French paper, but in the International Herald Tribune.

It is in this repressive climate that members of minority religions live, and it explains why a forum such as today’s is so vital to publicize the human rights abuses taking place in France. Government discrimination against individuals on the basis of the religious beliefs has been compounded by the refusal of the national media to fulfill their role as watchdogs of the public powers. In recent sermons in New York, I have discussed these human rights abuses before congregations of several different Christian denominations. I have been surprised and impressed by the strength of the reaction. It is clear to me from the shocked comments of parishioners afterwards that they had no idea how serious the situation in France has become.

The U.S. State Department recognizes that the only possible approach to dealing with an increasingly pluralistic society is one that embraces dialogue. MILS, however, has not only refused to dialogue with religions it has singled out for persecution, but its annual report published this year contained the extraordinary assertion that it was unable to dialogue with the United States government! Instead, the report announced its affiliation with a private “anti-cult” organization in the United States with which it has often consorted.

In fact, the unsavory history of the American anti-cult movement – which has largely been discredited after nearly four decades of attacking religions and tearing families apart – appears to be the blueprint for MILS. In this country we have endured a media-enabled demonization of new religious movements as “cults” capable of “brainwashing” and determined to enslave its members. This grotesque distortion became the basis of the movement’s sale of the services of kidnappers and “deprogrammers” whose alleged expertise would be necessary to break the spell of the presumed-nefarious religious movement. The academic and the legal communities, after examining the multitude of accusations and the methodologies of the so-called “research” used to support the claims of the anti-cultists, concluded emphatically that their theories of “brainwashing” and “mind control” are wholly without academic and scientific merit. The chief distinction between the hate and mischief which the anti-cult movement seeks to market here, as compared with its efforts in France and elsewhere in Europe, is that the governmental structures in the United States have, for the most part, declined to embrace its campaign – with the glaring exception of the incident seven years ago near Waco. In France, by contrast, the movement has been welcomed to use official, government authority for its discriminatory purposes.

It is against this background that we come to a recent and the most disturbing development in France to date – a proposed bill which is due to be voted on by the National Assembly on June 22. The bill, which is the subject of today’s Open Letter to M. Jospin in the International Herald Tribune, is a flagrant violation of fundamental human rights standards in that it singles out and targets members of minority religions as a special category of citizen. That a bill of this outrageous character is being seriously considered by a nation that is a signatory to the Helsinki Accords is profoundly disturbing.