United States

U.S. State Department Annual Human Rights Report www.state.gov

Outlook in France “not hopeful” - Congressman Joseph Pitts

Martin Luther King's organization would have been banned - Congressman Chris Smith

Christian Church Targeted - Congressman Thomas Tancredo

U.S. Trade Representatives report on foreign trade barriers criticizes French government for refusal to renew contract with Scientologist-owned software company

Outlook in France “not hopeful” - Congressman Joseph Pitts
CONGRESSMAN JOSEPH PITTS, PENNSYLVANIA
INTERNATIONAL OPERATIONS AND
HUMAN RIGHTS SUBCOMMITTEE HEARING
JULY 11, 2001

Thank you Madame Chairman and thank you for holding this important and timely hearing.

Last night I too returned from the OSCE Inter-Parliamentary Assembly in Paris, France, and as you know the French parliament approved legislation which has the potential to greatly restrict religious freedom in that nation, and the legislation may have negative repercussions on religious freedom around the world as other nations, particularly Hong Kong, pattern their legislation after the French model.

In Paris, we met with various groups to hear their stories, the impact of the legislation on them. I must say the outlook is not hopeful.

France however is not the only country whose laws raise concerns. The country of Belgium was mentioned which in 1997 issued a sect report listing 187 groups that they deemed dangerous or disturbing. Reports suggest that the government parliamentary commission issuing the list used hearsay stories never bothering to check the validity of such stories to compile their list, which is currently used to discriminate against numerous religious groups, including mainstream groups, such as Southern Baptists, Quakers, the YWCA, Hasidic Jews, the Jehovah’s Witness and others.

The parliamentary commission actually believed the account of one person who said that Hasidic Jews were dangerous because they stapled their children’s fingers together - it’s absolutely ludicrous. But these kind of accusations have dangerous consequences and so the Belgium government has restricted religious freedom. There are other Western European nations whose actions are disturbing.

The laws and the attitudes are of great concern because Eastern European nations and developing nations model their legislation, their actions off of these advanced Western countries. Unfortunately it seems that certain governments in Western Europe are sliding backwards, rejecting freedom, embracing the very thing, supposedly, they’re supposed to prevent, which is absolute control over citizens’ minds.

So as a member of this committee, as a member of the Commission on OSCE, I want to thank you for holding this important hearing. The most basic rights of many people in Europe are under threat and I look forward to hearing the other testimony from our distinguished witnesses. Thank you.

Martin Luther King’s organization would have been banned - Congressman Chris Smith
CONGRESSMAN CHRIS SMITH, NEW JERSEY CO-CHAIR,
COMMISSION ON SECURITY AND COOPERATION IN
EUROPE INTERNATIONAL OPERATIONS AND
HUMAN RIGHTS SUB-COMMITTEE HEARING
JULY 11, 2001

Thank you Madame Chairman and thank you for scheduling this very, very important hearing today on religious discrimination in Western Europe. As you’ve noted last evening, Mr. Tancredo and I and a delegation of Democrats and Republicans who make up the Organization for Security and Cooperation Parliamentary Assembly returned from Paris. I was co-head of that delegation and I can just say parenthetically we had a number of robust and vigorous debates on issues from trafficking in human persons, to the issue of police detention, torture, torture victims’ relief, and a whole host of other important issues were discussed. And we also had a very focused discussion on the issue of freedom of religion.

And Madame Chair, as you know, as we all know I think increasingly by the day, the new French Law that was promulgated by President Chirac on June 13th, is the latest effort in Western Europe to restrict religious freedom. Without a doubt, the law could be used as a legal tool and I would suggest as a blunt instrument for state authorities to dissolve certain religious groups found to be unacceptable by state authorities. The law vests the government with sweeping new powers for the government to fine and even liquidate—dissolve—religious groups based on the condition of an individual adherence. You know, Secretary Craner will testify in a moment after giving some background as to some of the differences between the cultures which should not be a pretext for allowing religious persecution. He points out, “That we believe,"—this is on behalf of the administration—"the new legislation in France places religious freedom at risk.” And I think those words are very, very, very true. Last Monday, Mr. Tancredo and I had the opportunity to meet with fellow Parliamentarian Madame Catherine Picard, who was one of the principal authors of the new French law. And I can say without any fear of contradiction—I think Tom had the same view—her explanations as to why the law was necessary were deeply disturbing. The mantra seems to be that there is a need for the state to respond to the mass suicides of the Solar Temple or even the Guyana suicides more than twenty years ago. They keep bringing out that as if that justifies this sweeping new crackdown on other religious and free exercise of conscience. Rather than allowing criminal provisions in the law to address those practices whenever and wherever they may occur. These events again are being used to advance an insidious and intolerant attack against religious practice. As a matter of fact during our conversation she asked why we were concerned about it. One of the most important aspects of the Helsinki process is that there are generally recognized individual and collective rights that we have all agreed to. Most of the countries of the world have agreed to the Universal Declaration on Human Rights but there are specific Helsinki principles about freedom of conscience that France has agreed to as well. These are indeed violative of those principles.

And I believe, and think Tom and many of us would agree with this, that the French law has had and will have a chilling effect on religious believers in France as they realize that if they step across a very, very carefully circumscribed line, that they run the risk of harassment, perhaps imprisonment of themselves and fines.

Let me also point out to my colleagues that France is leading by bad example. If you look at some of those who are looking and savoring what France is doing—the People’s Republic of China, there are very persistent reports today that they are looking at the model that is being propagated by France. As we all know, they crack down very often with total impunity but now if they can overlay some sense of respectability that even the French are doing it, it gives them additional pretext and standing in the world community to say they are just doing what other western democracies have been doing. Matter of fact, Joseph Bosco in his Washington Post editorial points out—or OpEd—"China’s communist leaders have finally found a western human rights model they like. France’s new anti-cult law making mental manipulation a crime.”

And finally, just let me say Madame Chair, if you look at the details of the law you become even more concerned. The ideal of offending the public order can become an actionable offense to dissolve a religious association. I asked Madame Picard three times, and got a very, very poor response, what happens—hypothetical—if Martin Luther King used non-violent civil disobedience with great precision in trying to topple unjust laws and policies in the United States, which ultimately resulted in new laws like the civil rights act of 1964 and many, many other good laws that followed. But he broke the law, and was arrested many times and spent time in prison to do it. He often used the pulpit to admonish believers to break the law. Under this legislation, if Martin Luther King or someone in France were to stand up and say this French law or that French law is unjust; we need to have non-violent civil disobedience, their religious association could be ripped up in two and dissolved and criminal and civil penalties meted out against those people who practice that.

This is a very dangerous law. I came away after having read the law several times and explanations of it, but after Tom Tancredo and I met with Madame Picard, I am very, very, very concerned that the intent is to dissolve religious belief among those organizations, associations with whom the government may have a disagreement.

So this is a dangerous law, a horrible precedent, and hopefully this hearing and others like it and a backlash by people who believe in religious freedom will result in, in the short-term, non-implementation or weak implementation, and then total eradication of this law. Thank you Madame Chairman.

Christian Church Targeted - Congressman Thomas Tancredo
CONGRESSMAN THOMAS TANCREDO, COLORADO
INTERNATIONAL OPERATIONS AND
HUMAN RIGHTS SUBCOMMITTEE HEARING
JULY 11, 2001

Thank you, Madame Chairman. I must admit that it is incredibly fortuitous that we are holding this hearing and it was one that I had not actually anticipated, and it is entirely my fault for not paying enough attention to my schedule. But I did not know until today that the hearing was going to be held and focusing on this particular topic and I could hardly believe it, because of course as Congressman Smith just told you, we just returned and had a very lengthy and very lively discussion with members of the French Parliament, and in particular with Madame Picard, about this particular piece of legislation.

It is amazing in a way, and that amazement we tried to share with our French colleagues, the incredible irony of having to bring to their attention a law of this nature. The attention of the French Assembly and the French government which prides itself, and rightly so, on having a history, a very rich history, of a liberal attitude toward individual freedom, individual perspectives, people sort of doing their own thing.

It is amazing that there we were in France having to bring to their attention the particular concerns that the world community, much of the world community, share about a law that they have passed and that is unfortunately becoming, as has been mentioned, a model for other nations to follow—and an excuse, not just a model for other nations to adopt, but an excuse for many nations to continue their practice of harassment and persecution of religious minorities.

That alone should give the French cause to think again about their actions. How this actually, how the rubber hits the road so to speak, and how this kind of an action taken by the government can effect individuals and church groups inside a country was brought to our immediate attention by a meeting we held and a subsequent dinner that we had with a pastor of a Christian church in Nimes, France. His name is Pastor DeMeo. Pastor DeMeo has been there for 20 years, it is a conservative Christian church and for a long time he has suffered as a result of that. It is not a church that is in the traditional mold, however you would want to describe it in France. He is actually a Frenchman, but has a background in the United States and there is a degree of distrust and a degree of persecution that he has already undergone over these past 20 years. A booklet he gave us is two inches thick of all the incidents, because nobody could really believe it.

You’re talking about France, you’re talking about a Christian church in France. How in the world can you really expect anybody to believe that there is persecution going on and that the government approves of it? But in fact there is a great deal of empirical evidence that he provided us to prove that fact. An interesting little aside, I guess, although it goes to the heart of the matter: Imagine this, a dentist in Nimes, who treats Pastor DeMeo’s family and Pastor DeMeo and members of Pastor DeMeo’s church. This dentist after a period of time was asking to actually go to school and change his profession, he wanted to go into law school, I believe it was, and he wanted to get into law school. He was refused entrance to law school and the reason given him was because he treated this group. I mean, if this is not again, an indication of the way this thing can play itself out. If the government sanctions this kind of activity, it allows for bigots in any community, of course, to bring their force to bear and then they can do so with impunity because they can feel as though the law is really on their side.

And this is the point we tried to make over and over again, to Madame Picard. I don’t know to what extent we were successful, but I do know that it was a heated debate, I can assure you of that. And there is an actual reluctance, I understand it, as you all know, I am not telling you anything you don’t know. There is sort of an anti-Western, specifically anti-US bias that comes out often in dealing with the French. And it certainly was there when we were bold enough, audacious enough, to come to them and suggest that they should rethink a law of this nature and even question them in terms of their human rights history.

So, subsequent to this law being passed, Pastor DeMeo has had a number of other incidents and is naturally concerned again, how this will play out. Will he be called a cult eventually? And it is, I assure you, a church, that many of us, a type of church many of us have attended. It is a conservative Christian church, evangelical in nature, but can he be accused of mind manipulation? Because of course there are a number of people in France, all over the world, who are anti-Christian in their bias and suggest that that kind of activity has some nefarious purpose.

Well of course this could happen. Now, the French government kept telling us “Well, don’t worry, it probably won’t happen that way.” They said that at first the law was proposed and it gave the bureaucracy a great deal of latitude as to actually how to deal with it. And if someone in the bureaucracy were to see some incident, they could actually take the action themselves to fine, or in fact dissolve a church. Madame Picard suggested that her changing of the law was a great advantage because it is now in the judicial process and the judge would have to make that determination. And it is true that a judge would have to determine whether the action taken that the person was being charged with rises to a certain level that would allow him the opportunity to actually abolish the church. But she never could respond to Congressman Smith’s example of Martin Luther King. Because it’s a great example, a perfect example, of a time in the United States when the government, especially the local government in the South and many areas, was quite hostile to that particular point of view, and that point of view that was being expressed in a church, motivated by deeply religious men and women.

Why would we think for a moment that someone would not have used this kind of law to stifle the ability of Martin Luther King and others to bring their concerns forward by dissolving their church. Not just arresting Martin Luther King and anybody else that actually broke a law. This is just absolutely incredible to us, so, I want to assure you that I am looking forward with great relish to the testimony here today, especially of course in light of the fact it’s all still very fresh at least on my mind. I would like to thank you.