Synthesis of the voluntary work side event OSCE – HDIM – 2014
Synthesis of the voluntary work side event OSCE – HDIM – 2014 Voluntary work in spiritual environments and its criminalization in modern society During our side event regarding the voluntary work, in which we wanted to find out if is the judicial system misused...
Report on France OSCE 2014
For years, France has had a policy of stigmatization and negative stereotyping of minorities of religion or belief it has labeled as “sects” or, more recently as “sectarian movements”. This derogatory classification corresponds to the improper assessment of religion or beliefs and the consideration that some of them, new or minority ones not belonging to traditional Churches or Institutions are “deviant”, can only stem from a “psychological hold” on the followers and constitute “sectarian abuses”.
The 1998 Ministerial Report on “cults”
Are the media campaign and the legislative initiatives targeting some religious movements the product of an accurate and scientific analysis? Or, instead, are there special interests taking undue advantage from State structures for questionable purposes? And the State lends itself and contributes to amplify this alarm with questionable, to say the least, initiatives.
Dutch 2013 study on alleged abuses by “sects” confirms results of 1984: No danger to the legal order or to public health
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”
