Parliamentary Commission about Cults in France
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The French authorities set up the Parliamentary Commission on Cults in France (Commission parlementaire sur les sectes en France) on 11 July 1995 following the events involving the members of the Order of the Solar Temple in late 1994 in the French region of Vercors, in Switzerland and in Canada. Chaired by deputy Alain Gest, member of the Union for French Democracy conservative party, the Commission had to determine what constitutes a cult (compared to legitimate new religious movements (NRMs)). It came to categorize various groups according to their supposed threat or innocuity (towards members themselves or towards society and the state).
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[edit] 1995
The published report of the Commission (also known as the Rapport Gest-Guyard), appeared on 22 December 1995. It remains to this day one of the very few official attempts in the world to categorize various movements according to the potential threat they may present. Some non-French-citizens and certain organisations criticized its categorization-methodology as such. Critics included the Church of Scientology, which did not want to see itself classified as a cult (which nevertheless occurred in the end). The Parliamentary Commission always bore in mind the difficulties of establishing any objective classification, although it never called into question the actual ethical and political imperatives of doing so, especially in the wake of the Order of the Solar Temple "mass suicides" and other dangerous cult activities occurring worldwide (such as, for example, the 1995 poison-gas attack in Tokyo's subway by the Aum Shinrikyo cult). The Commission held various hearings of persons involved in new-religious-movement activities or in anti-cult movements, and had the French secret service Renseignements Généraux give it lists of NRM activities and memberships.
[edit] 1999
A further French parliamentary commission reported in 1999 on cults in connection with money and the economy.
[edit] 2000
The 2000 annual report of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, released by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor of the U.S. Department of State, stated:
The ensuing publicity [by the release of a parliamentary report against "sectes"] contributed to an atmosphere of intolerance and bias against minority religions. Some religious groups reported that their members suffered increased intolerance after having been identified on the list.
[edit] 2004
In its 2004 annual report, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom stated:
[...] official government initiatives and activities that targets "sects" or "cults" have fueled an atmosphere of intolerance toward members of minority religions in France. [...] These initiatives [the publication of reports characterizing specific groups as dangerous and the creating of agencies to monitor and fight these groups] and are particularly troubling because they are serving as models for countries in Eastern Europe where the rule of law and other human rights are much weaker than in France.
The 2004 report concludes with an assessment that the restructuring of the main French agency concerned with this issue (referring to the new MIVILUDES replacing its predecessor, MILS), has reportedly improved religious freedoms in France.[1]
[edit] 2005
On 27 May 2005 (just before he left office), the then Prime Minister of France, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, issued a circulaire on cultic activities in France. The document mentions the 1995 Parliamentary Commission in the course of its call for increased government action against cults:
Cette vigilance doit s'exercer en tenant compte de l'évolution du phénomène sectaire, qui rend la liste de mouvements annexée au rapport parlementaire de 1995 de moins en moins pertinente. On constate en effet la formation de petites structures, diffuses, mouvantes et moins aisément identifiables, qui tirent en particulier parti des possibilités de diffusion offertes par l'internet. [Translation: We must exercise this vigilance in taking account of the evolution of the cult-phenomenon, which makes the list of movements attached to the Parliamentary Report of 1995 less and less pertinent. Indeed, one can observe the formation of small groups, scattered, mobile and less-easily identifiable, and which make use in particular of the possibilities of spreading offered by the Internet.][2])
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ United States Commission on International Religious Freedom
- ^ Circulaire du 27 mai 2005 relative à la lutte contre les dérives sectaires (Circulaire of 27 May 2005 concerning the struggle against cultic manifestations)
