Scientology in the News: Press Office |
It is not only "foreigners" who are the targets. This page has been erected to provide information and documentation of officially sanctioned discrimination against religious minorities in todays Germany. Abuses against parishioners of the Church of Scientology form the major focus. But other minority groups are also targeted. In his 1995 annual report to the United Nations, the Special Rapporteur on Religious Intolerance reported instances of discrimination by the German government against two religious groups, of which the Church of Scientology is one. And it is well known -- and documented by Helsinki Watch in its April 1995 report, Germany for Germans: Xenophobia and Racist Violence in Germany -- that Turks, Gypsies and Africans have been targeted by neo-Nazi skinheads and are viewed with hostility by the German government.
The real ugliness of discrimination in Germany today is that its most dangerous perpetrators are not street toughs. Some of them hold important state and federal government posts. Novelist Gunter Grass dubbed them "skinheads in neckties." If this fact is new to you, it is because international media has missed it or ignored it and has attributed xenophobia almost entirely to aggressively public neo-Nazis.
The founder of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard, wrote that the price of Freedom is "Constant alertness, constant willingness to fight back. There is no other price." That is the spirit in which we have erected this page. We encourage members of groups in Germany that are experiencing officially-endorsed discrimination to contact us with details of the abuses they have suffered.
(If you would like a copy of any of the publications above, or wish to sign a petition calling for an end to officially sanctioned human rights violations against ethnic and religious minorities in Germany, e-mail publicrelations@scientology.net with your street address and it will be sent to you by mail.)
For further information contact: Germany:
Official Repression of Religious Rights
Contents:
Why this page has been erected.
Germany today faces a crisis. Since reunification, international media have reported on growing xenophobia, violent attacks on "foreigners" and desecration of sacred Jewish symbols. This coverage has helped to publicize the rise in human rights abuses in Germany. But what has been reported is only the tip of the iceberg.
Leisa Goodman
(323) 960-3500
e-mail: publicrelations@scientology.net
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