HUMAN RIGHTS TESTIMONY ACTRESS CATHERINE BELL: Star of TV series “JAG” articulated the impact of religious discrimination in Germany on Scientologists and their families. Discrimination has affected U.S. citizens, including Craig Jensen (seated next to Bell), owner of an American software company which produced a component used in Microsoft’s Windows 2000 operating system. Some German officials threatened to ban the Microsoft product because Jensen is a Scientologist.

“Shockingly Unscientific”

Next to Germany, France received the most attention by witnesses throughout the hearing.

Testimony inevitably led to discussion of the infamous 1996 report of a French National Assembly parliamentary commission on so-called sects which published a blacklist of 173 denominations and groups in the country. Among the religions on the list are a Catholic order, the Baptists, other Christian groups, Eastern groups and predominantly minority religions.

The commission report is “shockingly unscientific,” testified Dr. Jeremy Gunn, scholar and broadly published author with the U.S. Peace Institute, who illustrated a comparison of discrimination in France with the era of the Vichy government.

The rapporteur for the 1996 report was convicted in March 2000 for criminal defamation against a spiritual group and his evidence was “denounced for research methods counted by the court as ‘not serious,’” added Rev. Skip L’Heureux, Executive Director of the Queens Federation of Churches, in his testimony before the committee. “Yet the blacklist continues to circulate and is used to justify discrimination.”

The censured report was also used as the reason to establish the government’s “Inter-Ministerial Mission to Fight Against Sects (MILS),” which is spearheading discriminatory bias against minority religions in France.

continued...

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