December 22, 2003

For immediate release
Linda Simmons Hight
Media Relations Director
Phone: (323) 960-3500
Fax: (323) 960-3508
mediarelationsdir@scientology.net

— New Evidence Indicates Germany Exploiting Discrimination Against Scientologists for Economic Gain —

The Church of Scientology International has asked the U.S. Trade Representative to investigate to what degree the German government is exploiting the climate of religious intolerance towards Scientology in Germany to enable German companies to gain a competitive advantage over their American rivals.

In a letter to U.S. Trade Representative Mr. Robert Zoellick, Rev. Leisa Goodman, Human Rights Director of the Church of Scientology International, has accused the German government of “the ultimate in cynicism.”

“New evidence shows that the German government, having created a climate of discrimination towards a religious minority, has been callously exploiting that climate as a trade weapon to place American companies at an economic disadvantage compared with their German competitors,” says Ms Goodman.

The Church’s letter has been prompted by the revelation this month in the German press that the government-owned Deutsche Post AG, majority owners of the express mail company DHL, orchestrated an attack against American competitors United Parcel Service (UPS) by falsely claiming that UPS was sponsoring the Church of Scientology.

In November 2000, the head of the so-called government-funded “consumer protection agency” ABI, notorious for spreading hate propaganda against religious minorities, held a press conference in Berlin to announce that documents supplied by an “anonymous source” had found “similarities” between the administrative principles used by the Church of Scientology and those of UPS.

ABI’s statements, made just two months before Deutsche Post acquired DHL, generated widespread media in Germany and led to a lawsuit by UPS against ABI which UPS lost on freedom of speech grounds.

But according to a December 5, 2003 report in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung by the German investigative reporter Hans Leyendecker, the “anonymous source” was one Andre Plath, hired by the Post Office’s PR firm WMP EuroCom to spread false stories about competitors.

The report in Sueddeutsche Zeitung states, “One of the main competitors of the Post Office is American UPS... Eberhard Kleinmann, head of ABI, said in a press conference that everybody sending his parcels by UPS is also strengthening Scientology. Where did Kleinmann get this information from?” It continues, “journalist Plath showed up all of a sudden, telling [Kleinmann] the names of important witnesses. ‘Plath really supported me very much.’ [Hans-Hermann] Tiedje [head of WMP], too, gave him names of journalists that he should contact.”

Rev. Goodman added, “The evidence also shows that the so-called consumer protection agency ABI acted as a call girl for the German government. Instead of protecting consumers’ rights, they fabricated lies about American competitors to German companies.”

In the last few years, Deutsche Post AG has been undergoing privatization; however, the German government has still a 20% direct shareholding in addition to an indirect holding of 48% through the state-owned bank, Kreditanstalt fuer Wiederaufbau.

The Church has specifically asked the U.S. Trade Representative, who is responsible for protecting American investments abroad, to ascertain the following:

a) The amount that ABI, which receives more than 100,000 euros annually from the German government, paid Plath for the story.

b) Whether ABI received additional funds direct from the German Post Office to conduct its campaign against DHL, and if so, how much.

The Church has also asked the Trade Representative to investigate whether similar dirty tricks were behind a German campaign in 1999 and 2000 against the American companies Microsoft and Executive Software, whose CEO is a Scientologist. Executive Software produces a disk defragmenter for the Windows 2000 program. Shortly before Windows 2000 was launched in Germany, rumours about the defragmenter started circulating in German media. The German Federal Office for Security in Information Technology (BSI) investigated and found the rumors to be wholly false.

It was in part because of the attack on Executive Software that the U.S. Trade Representative put Germany on the “watch list” in 2000 over discriminatory trade practices against American companies. The Trade Representative has continued to raise the issue each year in his National Trade Estimate Reports on Foreign Trade Barriers. In its 2003 Annual Report on International Religious Freedom, released on Thursday, the U.S. State Department again accused the German government of responsibility for “employment and commercial discrimination against Scientologists in both the public and private sectors.”

Although Scientologists have documented hundreds of human rights abuses against their members including a host of “dirty tricks” by the German intelligence services, the recent exposures are the first convincing evidence that German government officials have been fuelling the intolerance in Germany for economic reasons.