Articles

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.

"The [Orthodox] Church does not appeals for heretics, members of cults or dissidents to be subjected to prosecution. However, the decision to ban Jehovah's Witnesses is to be considered a positive act in the fight against the spread of cultic ideas, which have nothing in common with Christianity." These were the words with which Metropolitan Ilarion of Volokolamsk, chairman of the Council for External Affairs of the Russian Church, greeted the banning of Jehovah's Witnesses occurred in Russia 7 years ago, on April 20, 2017.

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."

A public school’s decision to give its students (many of whom are Muslims) a day off for Eid al Fitr has generated unnecessary controversies.

By Alessandro Amicarelli — On March 17, 1861, with the proclamation made in Turin of the newly established Kingdom of Italy, the result of the annexation of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies to the Kingdom of Sardinia, the first phase of united Italy began. It was a new sovereign state with the House of Savoy at its head and the Roman Catholic religion as the state religion.

On March 9, 2024, in London, the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama'at (AMJ) hosted the 18^th National Peace Symposium. Among the many guests were Alessandro Amicarelli, Chairman of FOB, and Marco Respinti, member of FOB's Advisory Council and editor-in-chief of the academic publication The Journal of CESNUR (Center for Studies on New Religions) and the CESNUR project  Bitter Winter: A Magazine on Religious Liberty and Human Rights.

On Wednesday, February 28, 2024, an important conference on interreligious dialogue was held in Milan, Italy, at the State University, on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the "Italian Islamic Religious Community" (COREIS), with the participation of scholars and representatives from the Jewish, Christian and Islamic worlds.

As reported in an article published in Bitter Winter by Yang Feng, according to a Falun Gong report, in 2023, 1,188 worshippers were sentenced to death, while 209 were killed. The thorny issue of organ harvesting to which Falun Gong worshippers sentenced to death are subjected, but also believers of other religions such as Uyghur Muslims and Christians of the Church of Almighty God, has come to the attention of the European Parliament (...)

The intolerant drift towards minority religions seems to know no rest in Europe, despite the dictates of the European Convention on Human Rights and the rulings promulgated by various courts in individual European states, such as the Court of Rome and, most recently, the Belgian Court of Cassation. The Netherlands also sees no reason to criminalise the restriction of contact with excluded ex-congregates.

It is with deep sorrow that we learn that Don Aldo Natale Terrin, a distinguished member of FOB's Scientific Committee, passed away on the evening of Tuesday, 9 January 2024.

Don Aldo Natale Terrin, priest of the Diocese of Padua, was born in Sandon on 23 December 1941 and was ordained to the priesthood on 8 July 1965. He was appointed as a teacher at the Minor Seminary of Thiene for secondary school. In the following months he also became a cooperator during the festivities in Roana (February-August 1966) and in Montegalda (August 1966-October 1967).

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.

The 17^th International Conference on Daoist Studies "Daoist Ways of Enhancing Life: I Ching, Feng Shui, and Personal Cultivation" is being held in Taiwan at Weixin Shengjjao Branch Temple between 1-5 January 2024.

Local and international scholars are representing different organizations at this important 5-day study conference.

The year 2023 ends with a good news for the Christian Congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses in Belgium. The Belgian Supreme Court definitively puts an end to the Ghent case, reaffirming the legitimacy of the practice, adopted by Jehovah's Witnesses and, essentially, by all religions and human associational groups, political or otherwise, of severing relations with those who have disaffiliated or been expelled from the congregation.

The New Life Church has been permanently disbanded. The latest appeals by the pastor did not deter the judges from doing so.

Pastor Vyacheslav Goncharenko no longer has a church. Last Monday, Belarus’ Supreme Court ruled that his church “New Life” is extremist and must be closed. The ruling concludes a long legal battle between the church and Aleksandr Lukashenko’s regime.

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.

On 10 December 1948, at the third session of the United Nations General Assembly held in Paris, Resolution No. 219077A adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. On the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the Declaration, we publish an article by lawyer Fabrizio d'Agostini, founding member of FOB.

There’s no doubt that the freedom of dress is a characteristic trait, and actually the most obvious, of personal identity, which manifests as the “right to be oneself”.

In 2001, France enacted the infamous anti-cult About-Picard law. Now, 22 years later, the French Minister Sabrina Agresti Roubache, who oversees the anti-cult agency MIVILUDES, is trying to change the About-Picard law for the worse.