Mar 27, 2014 – The Chairman of the Board of the Institute on Religion and Public Policy wrote a letter to the President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) in order to point out the great danger of a report drafted by Rudy Salles, French member and rapporteur at PACE. Mr.s Salles is instructing PACE to adopt policies which would seriously harm religious freedom in EU.

Before the 2013 study, the most recent comprehensive one conducted in The Netherlands dates back to the early 1980s. It was organized in the wake of the Jonestown Massacre in Guyana (1978), after intense lobbying of Anti-Religious Groups and a very active anti-sect group S.O.S., (a Dutch abbreviation for “Cooperating Parents of Sect Members”) worried about the growing “threat” from New Religious Movements, pejoratively denounced as “sects”

On 7th April the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe will vote on a report regarding “the protection of minors against excesses of sects”. The rapporteur Rudy Salles (France) recommends for Europe to adopt the french anti-sect line, in order to protect children from abuses. In the report he juxtaposes the French and the Swedish ways to relate to minority religions and surprisingly finds that the much criticised french anti-sect line with MIVILUDES and FECRIS would be better suited for the future of Europe.

reedom of Religion as a Human Right: The Council of Europe’s Upcoming Vote on Establishing “Sect Observatories”

The famous Moscow Helsinki Group, by the voice of its co-founder Lyudmila Alexeyeva, a very well known freedom fighter since the 70s in the Soviet Union, wrote to Mrs Anne Brasseur, President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe to alert her about a report drafted by the member of the French delegation Mr Rudy Salles, which should be voted on April 10, 2014 by the Assembly.

The Evropress Club of Journalist, in Bulgaria, sent a letter to the President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe to protest against a report drafted by French MP Rudy Salles, deemed to violate basic human rights standards and to be “very counter-productive for the eastern-European countries as well as for all Europe”.

I am writing not only to support FOREF’s complaint against Mr. Salles but to alert you to newly discovered facts that provide further proof that Mr. Salles is in breach of the PACE rules requiring objectivity and neutrality for Rapporteurs. In October 2012, the newspaper Nice Martin interviewed Mr. Salles and reported he had been appointed to the Board of MIVILUDES in October 2012. A copy of that news article dated 22 October 2012 is attached. Given MIVILUDES position and policies on the subject, this, in and of itself, constitutes a serious breach not only of the Code of Conduct for Rapporteurs but also of the Code of Conduct for Members of the Parliamentary Assembly. Mr. Salles should, at the very least, have removed himself as Rapporteur upon acceptance of this appointment.

Mr. Salles is a long-time associate of Mr. Georges Fenech, member of the French National Assembly and former head of the Miviludes,

30 civil society and religious leaders and 10 organizations have joined EIFRF in a supportive letter regarding Motion for a Resolution 13333 at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. The letter has been sent to every member of the Committee on equality and non-discrimination. Here are the text of the letter and the signatories.