U.S. Criticizes Germany on Scientology
Report Will Attack Policies That Target Members of Church
By Thomas W. Lippman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 27 1997; Page A01
The Washington Post
The State Department's annual survey of human rights conditions around
the world will contain expanded, toughened language criticizing
Germany for restrictions on the Church of Scientology and its members,
administration officials said.
The report, to be issued Wednesday, will chastise Germany for what a
senior administration official called "a campaign of harassment and
intimidation" against the controversial church. He said the United
States, seeking to protect religious freedom, has urged Germany
through diplomatic channels "not to prosecute people for wrong
thinking" but has been rebuffed.
The German response is, "We won't change our policy, no matter what
you say," a German diplomat here said. "You are a big country. You can
afford to have militias and cults. We can't." He said Germany, with 80
million people in a Montana-size country and a unique sensitivity to
the dangers of "extremism" because of its Nazi past, is obliged to
limit activities of groups perceived as threats to national
well-being.
The U.S.-German disagreement over Scientology is a rare irritant in
America's generally excellent relations with a key European ally.
Although both sides agree it is hardly a major source of friction, the
issue has a high decibel level because of the involvement of
high-profile Scientologists such as actor Tom Cruise.
The subject is emotional also because of charges by the Scientologists
that Germany's treatment of them recalls the Nazis' persecution of the
Jews -- a charge guaranteed to infuriate and pain Germans. The Bonn
government says it is trying to rein in what it regards as a dangerous
and subversive organization because of its commitment to maintain an
open democracy and never to repeat the errors of its tainted past.
The Clinton administration has been trying to walk a fine line,
standing up for the principle of freedom of worship but distancing
itself from the Scientologists' scorched-earth denunciations of a
friendly democratic ally.
"We have criticized the Germans on this, but we aren't going to
support the Scientologists' terror tactics against the German
government," State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns said,
criticizing statements from church supporters likening the campaign
against Scientology to the Nazis' antisemitic programs.
Burns and other officials said the issue is not whether Scientology is
good or bad, benign or malevolent. They said the United States is
obliged to support the church in the brawl between Germany and the
Scientologists because German actions may have infringed on the rights
of U.S. citizens who are Scientologists by encouraging a boycott of
Cruise's movies and restricting performances by jazz pianist Chick
Corea.
Scientology is a fast-growing international organization, founded in
the 1950s by American science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, whose
writings remain the group's guiding texts. Its aims, as laid down by
Hubbard, are "a civilization without insanity, without criminals and
without war, where the able can prosper and honest beings can have
rights, and where man is free to rise to greater heights."
The Church of Scientology claims 8 million members worldwide,
including about 30,000 in Germany. A church spokesman said that
because Scientology teaches that "man's fundamental nature is not
evil," it has stirred hostility in particular among conservative
Christian theologians in Germany.
Scientology has fought long battles for legal acceptance as a religion
and has succeeded in many countries, including the United States. The
Internal Revenue Service refused for decades to accord to Scientology
the tax-exempt status long granted mainstream churches, but since 1993
the church and its corporate entities have had the same tax status as
other religions.
To the German government, however, Scientology is not a legitimate
religion but a greedy, cult-like organization built on
"pseudo-science," in which "membership can lead to psychological and
physical dependency, to financial ruin and even to suicide," according
to a position paper distributed by the German Embassy here.
The paper says "the German government has not taken any legislative
action against the Scientology organization," but some German state
governments have.
The Church of Scientology, however, has posted on its World Wide Web
site a long, footnoted document saying its adherents in Germany are
"the targets of systematic discrimination in every strata of society
as part of an insidious exclusionary policy initiated, encouraged and
sanctioned by the government. Scientologists are routinely dismissed
from jobs, dismissed from schools, dismissed from political parties,
dismissed from social, business and political organizations, denied
the right to professional licenses, denied the right to perform their
art, denied the right to open bank accounts and obtain loans and
denied the right to use public facilities and concert halls."
The Scientologists say they are "blacklisted, boycotted, vilified,
ostracized and threatened" because of their church membership.
Governments' antipathy to Scientology is almost as old as the
organization. More than 30 years ago, an Australian state legislature
made membership a crime after a board of inquiry concluded that
"Scientology is evil; its techniques evil; its practice a serious
threat to the community, medically, morally and socially; and its
adherents are deluded and often mentally ill."
A Greek judge recently ordered a church center in Athens closed after
finding that Scientology is "an organization with medical, social and
ethical practices that are dangerous and harmful." An Italian court
last month ordered jail terms for 29 Scientologists found guilty of
"criminal association." In France, a prominent Scientologist was
sentenced to 18 months in prison in November by a Lyon court that held
him responsible for the suicide of a church member unable to pay for
church-sponsored courses.
The U.S. position, however, is that Scientology is a religion and its
members should not be harassed or persecuted just because they are
members.
"We believe that members of the Church of Scientology have a right to
practice their religion in Germany and all other countries," Burns
said at his Jan. 16 State Department briefing. "We believe that the
German government ought to respect the rights of the Scientologists
and all other religious communities in Germany."
Burns was commenting on the church because that morning several
prominent Americans placed a full-page "Open Letter to Helmut Kohl" in
several newspapers appealing for an end to the "shameful pattern of
organized persecution" of Scientology. Among the signatories were
Dustin Hoffman, Goldie Hawn, Gore Vidal, Mario Puzo, Oliver Stone and
Larry King.
The letter caused a sensation because it likened Germany's treatment
of Scientology to its persecution of Jews in the 1930s.
"Jews were at first marginalized, then excluded from many activities,
then vilified and ultimately subjected to unspeakable horrors," the
letter said. "The world stood by in silence. Perhaps if people had
spoken up, taken a strong stand, history would tell a different story.
We cannot change history but we can try not to re-live it."
Burns, while deploring Germany's actions against Scientology, called
the open letter "outrageous."
"And they are wrong," he said. "And we have advised the Scientology
community not to run those because the German government is a
democratic government and it governs a free people. . . . We share the
outrage of many Germans to see their government compared to the
Nazis."
Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League of
B'nai Brith, agreed with Burns. In a letter to the International
Herald Tribune, he said any effort to equate what is happening to
Scientologists with what happened to Germany's Jews is "historically
inaccurate [and] an affront to the memory of the 6 million Jews
murdered during the Holocaust."
The letter to Kohl was drafted by Bertram Fields, a prominent show
business lawyer in Los Angeles, who said the signatories are not
Scientologists and the church did not ask him to do it. He said he
took up the cause of Scientology because Cruise is a client and his
movie "Mission Impossible" faced a boycott in Germany because of
Cruise's church membership.
"It became evident to me that for a Western nation, this was a
horrible kind of thing," Fields said. He said Germany's arguments are
fallacious because the Scientologists are not threatening stability of
the German state by "doing what the Nazis did, marching in the streets
and beating people up."
Fields said it is "outrageous" that Kohl's party, the Christian
Democratic Union, denies membership to Scientologists. "You can be a
rapist or an ax murderer, but not a Scientologist," Fields said.
He said German outrage over the Nazi comparison was a "red herring"
because the open letter talked only about restrictions on Jews during
the early years of Hitler's rule, not the "final solution" that came
later.
Burns said he had discussed this point with Fields and rejected
Fields's argument.
"Do you mean to say Scientologists are going through what the Jews did
when Dachau [concentration camp] was set up in 1933, the first year
the Nazis came to power and they began to separate the mentally
retarded and the Jews?" Burns said. "For them to say they are being
treated like the Jews is historical amnesia."
U.S. officials said Germany and European nations generally cling to
policies that allow far more government interference with religious,
media and personal freedom than would be acceptable in this country.
But the United States is not alone in its criticism of German policy
toward Scientology.
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, reporting on
implementation of the Helsinki human rights accords in Germany, said
in 1993 that "it seems clear that Germany's course of action reflects
the determination to marginalize or eradicate groups perceived as
extremist or threatening to the established order. While
understandable, especially given Germany's past, this determination
can lead the government to engage in discriminatory policy," as in the
case of Scientology, it said.
@CAPTION: Actor Tom Cruise in a scene from the movie "Mission
Impossible," which was the target of a boycott in Germany because
Cruise is a Scientologist.
©Copyright 1997 The Washington Post Company
References
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