“Sect Filters”“Sect filters"—forms which make employment and contractual relations conditional on an individual attesting that he is not a Scientologist or a member of a “sect”—are rampant in Germany. Such clauses in contracts have been adopted and promoted by the Permanent Conference of Ministers and Senators of Interior of the States, by state governments in Bavaria, Hamburg, Berlin and Baden-Wuerttemberg, by the major political parties, and by federal ministers. The Bavarian government requires businesses contracting with the government to swear that no employees of the company “use the technology of L. Ron Hubbard.” They also must swear that they will exclude persons from working on the fulfillment of any contract with Bavaria if they “apply, teach or otherwise distribute the technology of L. Ron Hubbard” during the contracting period. This forces corporations to adopt the government’s exclusionary policy towards Scientologists or to suffer serious economic consequences.
Most banks refuse to open accounts for Scientologists. They are routinely dismissed from jobs or denied employment because of their beliefs. Many sports and social organizations exclude them. Artists who are Scientologists are denied the right to perform or exhibit. Schoolchildren in Bavaria are given government literature that solemnly informs them that a Scientologist is recognizable by a “change in weight” and an “alteration in the growth of the beard”. The Bavarian Ministry of Culture has ordered teachers to report on their progress in indoctrinating parents and pupils against Scientology.
The names of private businesses owned by Scientologists are entered in the national government’s computers with an “S” notation beside them.
It makes no difference who you are. The tennis player Arnaud Boetsch, who helped France win the Davis Cup in 1995, lost his contract with Ruppeur Tennis Club in southern Germany because of his religion. In November 1997, he signed to represent the club in the German Championships League. All went well until one of the club’s sponsors, the South German Bank (Landesbausparkasse Baden), pressured Ruppeur to cancel Mr. Boetsch’s contract because he is a Scientologist. The club complied. The National German Sports Association has requested of all member associations that they use a “sect filter” requiring their members to swear they have no connection to Scientology.
Artistic Discrimination
The German government has managed to infiltrate religious controversies into places they should never go. In 1993, the Baden-Wuerttemberg government cancelled a state-sponsored concert by American jazz musician Chick Corea because he is a Scientologist. Before 1993, Mr. Corea, who has won nine Grammy Awards, gave 15-17 concerts in Germany every time he toured Europe. Today, he is rarely able to perform in Germany despite packed halls on the few occasions he does. In Bavaria, the government has banned him from playing at the famous Burghausen jazz festival, again solely because of his religion.
In 1996, the Young Union of the Christian Democratic Party tried to organize a boycott of the movies Mission Impossible and Phenomenon because their principal actors are Scientologists. The boycotts flopped, but to this day not a single government official in Germany has voiced one critical word against them.
Mr. Enrique Ugarte, an accomplished Spanish musician, composer and conductor, is the European champion and twice-World champion in accordion playing. He has conducted some of Europe’s finest orchestras, including the Basque National Orchestra and the English Chamber Orchestra, and has performed in Germany’s leading concert halls, such as the Munich Philharmonic and the Hamburg Music Hall. In June 1998, he was about to sign a contract as the director of an international “Opera Circus.” During a meeting with the chief executive officer of the contracting company, C&P Gruppe of Stuttgart, Mr. Ugarte happened to mention that he is a Scientologist. The CEO promptly told him that he could not be retained and the contract could not be signed, adding that C&P Gruppe was required to sign several contracts with sponsoring organizations which prohibited it from employing Scientologists.
Climate of Intolerance
Unfortunately, the above is only the tip of the iceberg. Many other religions including Muslims, Mormons, Charismatic Christians, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Bahais complain of a climate of religious intolerance in Germany. “Filters” are in use which require job applicants to declare that “I am not a member of a sect or free church.” Derogatory TV shows on Jehovah’s Witnesses are shown in schools and pupils are taught that the Witnesses are dangerous. Children of Muslims suffer discrimination in schools. According to the U.S. State Department’s 1998 human rights report, 100 Muslim families from a Frankfurt suburb were denied the right to convert a building into a mosque by the local mayor who pledged that no mosque would be built there until a Christian Church is permitted in Mecca.
In the state of Schleswig-Holstein, minority religions are placed on an index maintained by the government. Those on the index, which includes Buddhist and yoga organizations, are denied data protection rights under a law the state government passed specifically to deny them to religious minorities.
The chairman of Bavaria’s ruling party has openly opposed multi-culturalism as “a wrong track with a preprogrammed conflict.” And, despite being urged by the United Nations Human Rights Committee to discontinue “sensitizing sessions” for judges against the alleged practices of religious minorities, the sessions continue with the blessing and participation of the government.
Bugging and Infiltration
Scientologists and some Islamic organizations have been placed under surveillance by Germany’s Office for the Protection of the Constitution. This is a peculiar institution, very much the product of recent German history. So long as it was investigating terrorist organizations like the Red Army Faction, it served a legitimate function. But that is no longer the case. The OPC has decayed into a political tool to brand and stigmatize any organization which can be tarred in no other way.
This brings the activities of the OPC, as currently practiced, into conflict with Germany’s commitments to respect the freedoms of religion, speech and assembly. The OPC has bugged telephones, spied on Scientologists, attempted to infiltrate churches of Scientology and even tried to bribe parishioners to bear false witness against their religion. Some Scientologists have been threatened if they refused to cooperate with the OPC.
Being placed under surveillance has serious consequences for an organization and its members. Members of groups being observed have lost their friends, been ostracized in their communities, are denied professional opportunities and have seen their children isolated and abused at school. Yet in many cases, they have already been absolved of any illegalities after thorough investigation by the proper authorities. In other words, by any democratic standard, they are innocent of wrongdoing.
The abuse of the OPC to legitimise discrimination against religious minorities is made possible by the cross-pollination between the state and the established churches. The idea of putting religious competitors under surveillance first came from officials and apologists from the politically potent Catholic and Lutheran Churches. As early as 1985, Lutheran priest Wilhelm Haack demanded that the OPC be “made sensitive to the problems of sects.”
The flaw that has enabled the OPC to be diverted from the protective role envisioned for it by its creators, and channelled into activities harmful to democracy, is within the law that established it.
The OPC’s mandate is “the collection and evaluation of information... on endeavors which are directed... against constitutional democratic order... Such endeavors are politically determined, goal and purpose-oriented manners of conduct by a group of persons which is intended to remove or nullify one of the constitutional principles.”
Because it is necessary only to demonstrate “indicators” of unconstitutional motives to justify placing an organization under surveillance, the OPC has wandered into the realm of speculation. Actual criminal acts need not be established. All that is necessary is to show, by some argumentative means—usually through selective culling of a group’s literature and statements by its leaders – that a potential may exist for efforts “against the free democratic order.”
Such a method is full of pitfalls. As any intelligent person knows, nothing is easier than to pull isolated statements out of context and use them to project hypothetical scenarios.
Take the Roman Catholic Church. There are numerous biblical exhortations that in isolation could be alleged to show indicators of anti-democratic intent, a point made by Hans W. Alberts, Professor at the Administrative University of Hamburg, in an essay in Sueddeutsche Zeitung on April 26, 1997. “What would happen if you applied this procedure to the Bible?”, he wrote. “Unconstitutionality would be easy to document.”
The Catholic Church, as Pope John Paul reminded Austrian bishops as recently as November 1998, is governed on a hierarchical model. In response to their complaints about the Vatican’s handling of a sexual abuse case, he bluntly told them, “The Church is not a democracy, and no one from below can decide the truth.” He rejected demands for reform from a group calling itself “We are the Church” and reaffirmed the leadership role of priests and bishops. To make sure they got the point, he added that the Church’s position on women priests, divorce and abortion remains unchanged.
As Professor Juergen Seifert has said in an interview published in a recently released book about Scientology in Germany, “What is missing in all this is any evidence that Scientology even in the slightest is engaged in any unconstitutional actions in the Federal Republic.” The very things that the OPC was created to prevent – the undermining of democracy and civil liberties—are precisely the dangers it presents. This very point was made by the former Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger in an article in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on September 6, 1996. She warned that to set the OPC observing organizations when the evidence does not warrant it is tantamount to introducing a “thought police.”
Dialogue
One route that has not been tried to bring an end to these abuses is dialogue. It is the preferred route for the U.S. State Department, which has made several attempts over the last few years to persuade German officials to dialogue with the Church of Scientology. The Kohl administration set its face against dialogue.
The new government has told the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe that it favors dialogue as a means of resolving differences. If the government chose, it could apply the powerful tools of two-way communication and dialogue to its relations with religious minorities, and so clear up misunderstandings. This is consistent with United Nations recommendations. In his April 1998 report to the United Nations Human Rights Commission, the Nations Special Rapporteur on Religious Intolerance urged that “the State, beyond day-to-day management, must implement a strategy to prevent intolerance in the field of religion and belief... sustained efforts are required to promote and develop a culture of tolerance and human rights.”
For further information, contact:
Church of Scientology International
6331 Hollywood Blvd.
California, Los Angeles 90028
(323) 960-3500
e-mail: humanrightsofficer@scientology.org