Censorship at Paris Book Fair

As reported by the British publication, “Index on Censorship”, at the beginning of March 2001, the French Publishers’ Association has fallen victim to a climate of religious intolerance and censorship of free speech in France.

The association denied Bridge Publications, publishers of the works of L. Ron Hubbard, the right to have a booth at the Paris Book Fair in March. When a fact-finding team consisting of Hans Janitschek, President of the Society of Writers of the United Nations, William Banks Jr., President of the Harlem Writers Guild in New York and Lord Duncan McNair from Britain visited the Fair to find out why, the Fair’s general manager, Bertrant Morisset, ordered non-uniformed, shaven-headed “security guards” in leather jackets to physically eject them.

As Index on Censorship reports, “The Paris Book Fair, for many years synonymous with open-mindedness and literary diversity, is the latest French institution to succumb to growing religious intolerance in the country.”

Bridge is one of two Church of Scientology-affiliated publishing houses. Located in Los Angeles, it publishes L. Ron Hubbard’s works for the Western Hemisphere. New Era Publications International (NEPI), based in Copenhagen, Denmark, covers the rest of the world, including Europe, Africa, Australia, New Zealand and throughout Asia. In previous years, the Paris Book Fair has denied NEPI the right to have a booth. NEPI did not apply this year.

Bridge had at first been informed by their contact at Reed Corporation, a company that organizes the Fair, that a booth was available. (Reed also organizes the London Book Fair, where there has been no censorship). And Bridge had paid a deposit.

But Reed then notified Bridge that the French Publishers’ Association, known as the Syndicat National de l’Edition (SNE), organizers of the Fair, had turned down the application.

A fact-finding delegation arrived in Paris on March 17, the day after the Fair opened. The delegation intended to speak to board members of SNE to find out the reason for the denial and, hopefully, to clear up any misunderstandings so that Bridge could exhibit in the future.

In his United Nations Weekly Report, published in the Greenwich Village Gazette, Mr. Banks described his visit to the Paris Fair as part of the delegation:

”.. the principle of free speech suffered a blow, in of all places, that city’s world renowned and highly regarded book fair. The French Cultural Ministry excluded a total of 173 organizations from participation in the five-day event. This discrimination was not apparent to the thousands of book enthusiasts who enjoyed the booths which were sponsored by the hundreds of booksellers who proudly displayed their publications. All seemed well in Paris.

“But there was something very foul in the air of the mammoth arena where the event was held.”

He goes onto related what occurred:

“The group was there to question officials about their exclusion. They were peaceful, but they were physically ejected. Among those in the group was a former member of the British House of Lords, Lord Duncan McNair. Lord McNair was jostled and another member of the group was thrown to the ground in the process of the removal. Lord McNair went directly to the British Embassy and filed a vigorous complaint before shocked and outraged Embassy officials.”

SNE is a member of the International Publishers Association, whose primary purpose “is to safeguard the fundamental freedoms to publish and read. It defends the rights of authors and publishers to create and distribute the works of the mind without hindrance.”