Anti-cults

France's state grants funded with taxpayers’ money said to be misused by anti-cult groups stigmatizing and inciting hostility against some religious or belief groups and their members. In the framework of its 2023 Call for Projects, MIVILUDES (Interministerial Mission of Vigilance and Combat against Cultic Deviances) generously allocated a state subsidy of 150,000 EUR to CAFFES (Family Support Center Facing Cultic Control). This represents a considerable, if not completely disproportionate, grant for a small association with 90% of its annual budget funded with public money.

CAP Liberté de conscience (09.12.2024) — On December 2, 2024, the Marseille Magistrates’ Court ordered UNADFI (Union Nationale des Associations de Défense des Familles et de l’Individu) to publish a right of reply from CAP Liberté de Conscience on its website within 48 hours, subject to a penalty of 50 euros per day of delay. UNADFI had argued that its status as an organization of public utility meant that the law did not apply to it but the judge ruled that UNADFI was not above the law.

One year ago, on November 28, 2023, a French SWAT team raided several houses and appartments where yoga practitioners, members of MISA yoga school in  Romania, had gathered for their spiritual retreats.  A few days earlier, on November 15 2023, Sabrina Agresti-Roubache, Minister Delegate for Citizenship and City Development of the French government and overseer of MIVILUDES, lodged a bill aimes to ‘reinforce the fight against sectarian drifts' prompted by a specious increase in “saisines” (dubious and controversial reports) received by the MIVILUDES.

by Alessandro Amicarelli and Massimo Introvigne — Shincheonji Church of Jesus, the Temple of the Tabernacle of the Testimony (in short, Shincheonji) is a South Korean Christian new religious movement that has frequently suffered slander and discrimination at home and abroad. Its members have even been submitted to the criminal practice of deprogramming, and two of them died during violent deprogramming attempts.

Despite being a blatant violation of Directive 2014/24/EU of 16 February 2014, almost 30 years later, the ‘Sects Filter’ is still active in Germany. Professor Massimo Introvigne had already highlighted this serious violation in 2021. The sect filter was invented by an anti-cultist and former MP employed by the City-State of Hamburg as a professional anti-Scientology “expert,” Ursula Caberta, in 1995.

60 years after the start of the case that would lead to his conviction for plagio

by Alessandro Amicarelli — October 12, 2024 marks the 60th anniversary of a tragic event for the Italian democracy. On that date the Aldo Braibanti case, a judicial disgrace in a republican, democratic and anti-fascist Italy, began. All the more so because the defendant on trial would shortly be a young philosophy graduate, formerly on the Italian Communist Party's central committee, formerly a partisan, accused of using plagio, the legal guise of brainwashing, to allegedly obtain sexual favors from younger boys.

Bitter Winter reports the gruesome story of the release of personal data of Chinese asylum seekers who are members of the Church of Almighty God. Whatever one's stance there may be about minority religious groups, which anti-cult and against-cult organizations continue to call cults and abusive sects – or even specifically towards this Chinese community, the State should ensure the utmost secrecy and protection of the data of asylum seekers.

by Fabrizio d’Agostini — Five association acronyms that state in their very name that their purpose is the defense of the victims of psychological abuses, have recently re-proposed, in a letter sent to some authorities, an “old” moan from the 1970s (mind war in the USA) ...

On October 8^th 1600 A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare was published by Thomas Fisher. On a 2024 midsummer night in Northern Italy a young woman, Sharon Verzeni, 33 years old, popped out of her home for a night walk when her short and fatal midsummer nightmare started. In fact, minutes later someone attacked her and after managing to call the local ambulance service for help she died.

In a recent article, Professor Massimo Introvigne reported on an alarming increase in incidents of violence perpetrated in Japan against members of the Christian Congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses and an equally alarming increase – according to Jehovah's Witnesses of up to 638 percent – of hate crimes and hate speeches.

"Repeat a lie a hundred, a thousand, a million times and it will become a truth" is a phrase attributed to Nazi hierarch Joseph Goebbels, Minister of the Propaganda of the Third Reich. Whether the attribution is correct or not, this practice is constantly used in all spheres to try to inculcate in others or in the public opinion a certain modus pensandi (way of thinking) and, consequently, a certain modus operandi. It is certainly used by the anti-cultists, as repeatedly reported on this site.

Documents prove that private anti-cult organizations had a key role in the creation of government documents that caused a surge of hate speech and violence.

by Massimo Introvigne — In June 2023, while peacefully engaging in preaching, a female Jehovah’s Witness in her 70s was assaulted by a 57-year-old man.

The outcry over the new French law that has established the crime of "psychological submission" aimed at "strengthening the fight against sectarian drifts" and, from bad to worse, the crime of incitement to refuse treatment or the adherence to unconventional practices, is not fading. But the most attentive have not missed the fact that the new crime seriously endangers freedom of religion or belief, an old target of French laicity. Also because in all of this there is the unwieldy hand of MIVILUDES. 

While France, through the government agency MIVILUDES, is targeting the followers of MISA Yoga and its spiritual leader Gregorian Bivolaru, Sweden, which has always been seen as a vanguard of tolerance, inclusiveness and human rights, has unexpectedly engaged in persecution of a new Muslim religious movement, the Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light. The director of Human Rights Without Frontiers, Willy Fautré gave a detailed account of this, which we publish below.

Under the pretext that the number of "saisines" (dubious and controversial reports) received by the MIVILUDES was increasing, on November 15, 2023, Sabrina Agresti-Roubache, Minister Delegate for Citizenship and Urban Development in the French government and MIVILUDES superintendent, presented a bill to "strengthen the fight against cultic deviances." Today, thanks to an article in The European Times^® NEWS (reproduced below) signed by Willy Fautré, director o

"Approving that law would be a mistake for France," wrote Fabrizio d'Agostini, FOB's scientific advisor and founding member, regarding the bill to strengthen the fight against sectarian deviance that the French government approved despite the Senate's contrary opinion. "The history of France, but also of humanity, is 'chock-full' of similar laws, sometimes less refined, sometimes more brutal, mostly against religious minorities but not only and they have always been bloody stories of death, pain, suffering. They still are."

In the 17^th century Neapolitan philosopher Giambattista Vico illustrated how we have witnessed a turn over of moments of civilisation and moments of barbarism. France, evidently in the grip of a moment of barbarism, is once again proposing a law to strike down the so-called "sectarian drifts", to stifle any thought not aligned with the single thought so much in vogue today.

Alessandro Amicarelli — On December 7, 2023, an important development happened in the Argentinian court case of the Buenos Aires Yoga School (BAYS). The Court of Appeals annulled the elevation to trial of the defendants and sent the case back to the investigating judge, urging him to evaluate the new evidence that had surfaced, in dialogue with the parties. The prosecutors filed an appeal in cassation against the Court of Appeals decision.

In the article published below, Willy Fautré, director of Human Rights Without Frontiers, describes a curious example of retaliation law that sees FECRIS - a supporter of the French About-Picard law of 12 June 2001, which provides for the dissolution of minority religious groups accused of 'abuse of weakness' (abus de faiblesse) against their followers - in the dock with a request for dissolution proposed by our French confederate CAP LC (Coordination des Associations et des Particuliers pour la Liberté de Conscience, an NGO with ECOSOC consultative status).

We share an important contribution by Willy Fautré, director of Human Rights Without Frontiers, published in Bitter Winter on the issue of how the media demonise religious minorities. Already in the past, Fautré had denounced the Belgian media's campaigns against the Christian congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses, giving misleading when not outright false information, which was punctually refused in court. But so be it, the damage was done and the aim achieved.