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Home > Publications > Religious Apartheid 1997
Religious Apartheid 1997 – Continuing Official Repression of Minority Religious Rights in Germany
The events which have occurred as part of this official campaign are chilling. An exhibition entitled “Scientology – A Danger To Our Society” prepared by twelve-year-old pupils at the Ickstatt School in Ingolstadt and open to the public is illustrative.
This exhibit consists of comics and posters prepared by pupils under the direction of a teacher who served as project director and who presented lectures on Scientology as part of the “enlightenment effort” designed “to stop this Mafia Church.”67 As demonstrated by photos of comics and posters from this exhibition,68the government’s enlightenment campaign amounts to an indoctrination program which teaches students intolerance and hate.
Other events are similarly offensive. In April, the Karls School sponsored a “lecture” in its gymnasium for students, parents and the public entitled Cancer Scientology.69 In December, an “Action Day - Scientology” was held in the Werner von Siemens School in Munich to, in the words of the teacher who organized it, “highlight the fascist background” of Scientology and other targeted minority religions and ideologies.
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(Following is the translation of the above article)
“Besides the comics, the pupils pinned newspaper articles on the ’Church of Scientology,’ founded by the ex-science-fiction author L. Ron Hubbard in 1954, to the exhibition-walls. In the German lessons, lectures on the subject were prepared, using translations of genuine texts of the sect. The 15-year-old Peter, following a picture from a Scientology brochure built a so-called
E-Meter, a lie-detector, like Scientologists use for their worldwide ’psycho-terror.’
“’Even pupils will be recruited for the sect,’ Herbert Burghardt, the leader of the Ickstatt-Schule warns. ’When we inform the young people on this, they are able to protect themselves of such doing.’”
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The students wanted to invite a Scientology representative to make a presentation, but this was refused by the school.70 The Ministry of Culture wrote to the teacher expressing its support of this event.71
The Ministry of Culture refused a request from a Church of Scientology representative to allow them to make presentations to refute inaccuracies about their religion and to allow for a balanced point of view.72
This campaign amounts to the pursuit of an indoctrination program which does not respect parents’ religious and philosophical convictions. An educational program which does not convey information in a neutral, objective, scholarly and pluralistic manner has no proper place in a democracy. Education should be the essential means of combatting discrimination and intolerance; it should not be turned into a training ground for it.
This campaign is extremely injurious to the rights of children of Scientologists who are pupils in these schools as well as their parents by denigrating their beliefs and by refusing to respect their right to freedom of religion and belief.
The Bavarian government’s actions represent an infringement of the right to freedom from discrimination in education articulated in Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), Article 13 the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ESCR), and Articles 2, 4 and 5 of the Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief (Declaration). These actions also contravene the principles of nondiscrimination in education explicitly articulated in UNESCO’s Convention Against Discrimination In Education and the requirement articulated in Article 14 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child that States respect the right of children to freedom of thought, conscience and religion.
Bavarian “Enlightenment Campaign” Continued...
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