Ethnic Cleansing in Germany: A Symposium

And earlier this month, as part of nothing less than a war ( a krieg—their word is appropriate) against the Church of Scientology, in a move dramatically calculated to maximize intimidation of anyone who might think to have any contact with any member of the Church of Scientology, the government publicly announced a program of massive federal secret surveillance of the Church on grounds that it really, like the Jehovah’s Witnesses, might have “anti-German constitution” beliefs.

I think that what is happening in Germany today is a nightmare of proportions that the world really should be coming to grips with. It is happening very fast and it affects all of us.

This was the result of a meeting of a massive task force of state and federal interior ministers who met with representatives from the German equivalent of the CIA and FBI, and decided on the basis of the so-called “cult experts”—who are generated from the United States and elsewhere—that Scientologists may have “anti-democratic” ideas.

It is true through history that the accusation of alleged “subversiveness” has been waved by those who would be religious persecutors. That tactic was used against the Jews and it has been used against so many groups through history. Scientologists have been cast into the same discriminatory and invidious position as Communist subversives were during the Cold War. Germany is really caught up in a hysterical campaign against so-called “cults” or “sects” (the derogatory German reference) in general but particularly against the Church of Scientology, in one brochure calling them “insects.” The word for “cult” in German is “sekt” and so there was a publication called “Insekten.” They have this focus to exterminate this “infestation” that is against the interests of a healthy, pure Germany. And Church members have been excluded from political party membership, they have been excluded from government procurement contracts, and from participating in the normal life of a German citizen.

There are campaigns—they use the English word “outing”—of publishing the names of people who are members of the Church of Scientology and other minority churches. These people are then open to public opprobrium and scorn and to boycotts of noted actors and performers who happen to be members of the Church, such as Chick Corea, John Travolta, Tom Cruise. Companies make you fill out something called the “sekten filter”—a form which asks you to divulge whether you are a member of, you know, this group, the Church of Scientology.

Germany, because of what it has done regarding Scientology, has now been criticized in more than 10 reports by official government and human rights organizations, including the United States State Department and the United Nations Human Rights Commission. The State Department has specifically included Germany’s harassment of Scientology in its yearly human rights reports for four consecutive years.

So, escalating over the last seven years since the 1990 Germany reunification, we have seen this alarming rise of individual and governmental action against refugees, guest workers and other third-world foreigners legally in Germany, against German Jews, the German Roma and Sinti, Romani peoples, and many religions and philosophical groups, all attacked in a xenophobic campaign of “Germany for Germans.” They do not use the word “ausländer,” foreigner, but there’s a special word for these kind of people—“fremden,” strangers. They use that against members of religious groups, black people and people from Third World countries. And I think that, as is often the case in history, the Church of Scientology has been picked as a test case to create precedents. A few will stand behind it, a few will challenge the attack, and those who attack will then be able to craft precedents to use against other groups.

Next