Religious Freedom Alert: France
173 Religions Blacklisted

With the single exception of Germany, France’s treatment of members of minority religions is the harshest and most undemocratic in Western Europe. Behind this intolerance is a small cadre of extremists who have infiltrated the government and are setting French policy on matters of religion.

In 1996, France was the first European country to appoint a parliamentary commission to investigate religions other than those with state recognition. There was no broad parliamentary support for such a commission; it was maneuvered into existence by the same extremist cadre. Its president was M. Alain Gest, its vice president Jean-Pierre Brard and its Rapporteur M. Jacques Guyard, all French politicians with histories of religious intolerance.

The Commission ignored the findings of experts in the field of religion and relied instead on material supplied by a private French anti-religious group, ADFI, and the French intelligence police, known as the Renseignements Generaux – which work closely together on the subject of religions. ADFI is a propaganda arm for those behind the extremist measures against minority faiths in France and the RG has acquired the reputation of being a tool of political interests.

In August 2000, Tavernier and ADFI’s attorney Oliver Morice were sent to trial on criminal defamation charges after stirring unfounded speculations in international media about who was responsible for the alleged disappearance of case files involving members of the Church of Scientology. The Paris Court of Appeals had ruled that any disappearance of these files was due solely to action by court personnel. The following month, Tavernier was again criminally charged for a defamatory statement in an ADFI magazine alleging certain remarks by a Church of Scientology official on a TV show in January 2000. In fact, the official had not even appeared on the show.

The former president of ADFI in Angers, Yves Damon, was also traced by police as the source of death threats against two Scientologists in that city.

Using these sources, the Commission’s report blacklisted no less than 173 religious movements by branding them with the pejorative label of “sects.” Among those movements were the Baptists—the religion of the U.S. President and Vice-President—Mormons, Seventh-Day Adventists, Scientologists, and even Catholic organizations.

The parliamentary report resulted in widespread discrimination: According to the Brussels-based Human Rights Without Frontiers, individuals adhering to the movements defamed in the report have experienced “defamation, slander, anonymous threats, loss of reputation, loss of jobs or promotions, dismissals, loss of visitation rights or child custody in divorce settlement, bomb threats in rented rooms, denial of room renting for religious ceremonies and so on.”

Repressive System

Although the United Nations, the Council of Europe, the European Court of Human Rights, human rights groups, scholars and experts have called for a broad, inclusive definition of religion consistent with the standards of pluralism, minority rights, and religious freedom mandated by human rights instruments, the French government has adopted a repressive system designed to marginalise, ostracise and stigmatise targeted minority faiths by improperly labelling them as sects.

Whereas the Swedish, Dutch, British and other European governments have encouraged dialogue with minority faiths, the French government has set up an “Interministerial Mission to Fight Against Sects (MILS).” It is headed by Alain Vivien, president of a private group in France which agitates against minority faiths.

It is in large part due to the actions of Vivien, Brard, Guyard, Gest and ADFI—which operates as a private propaganda arm of Vivien and MILS—that the U.S. State Department has rebuked French officials for creating an “atmosphere of intolerance and bias against minority religions.” And not only the State Department, but the European human rights community has come down hard on the French government. In 1999, the International Helsinki Federation (IHF), based in Vienna, criticized what it calls “a manifold pattern of virtual persecution” in France. The IHF deplored the establishment of MILS because it has led to “slanderous reports in the media, to professional prohibitions, to religious discrimination by the French authorities and to increasing intolerance from civil society towards ordinary people on the grounds of their personal religious beliefs.”

“Minority religions have been publicly marginalised and stigmatized... children of minority religious groups have been stigmatized as ‘cult members’ in their schools and neighbourhoods,” the IHF stated.

Alain Vivien’s fanaticism came to the fore in 1999 when a delegation from the Washington, D.C.-based Commission for Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) visited France to engage the French government in dialogue over its treatment of minority faiths. During a hearing on religious intolerance in Europe, Congressman Chris Smith, CSCE-chairman, described Vivien’s attempts to “blackball” a member of the Commission as a cult member.

“We ran into this recently when Mr. Alain Vivien, the head of the Interministerial Mission, originally refused to meet with ... a member of our staff, and her delegation because he obviously had wrong information. This incident was certainly an eye opener for this chairman and for the members of our Commission because she was thought to be part of a dangerous sect... alarm bells went off all over Washington and certainly among the Democrats and Republicans that make up this Helsinki Commission."

Moreover, Vivien was quoted in an AFP release of June 14, 1999, as saying:

“In the United States, freedoms are crazy. In the name of the First Amendment of the American Constitution which forbids legislation on religious matters, one can say and do anything."