by Massimo Introvigne — In the first article of this series, we saw how CIA propaganda created the word and a theory of “brainwashing” to explain why intelligent people might embrace such an absurd doctrine as Communism was, and to accuse the Soviet and Chinese Communists of sinister practices depriving their victims of their free will. Paradoxically, the CIA came to believe in its own propaganda, and tried to replicate the Communist “brainwashing” in its own experiments. The CIA secret “brainwashing” project was codenamed the MK-ULTRA project. Originally, it was only mentioned in a handful of publications critical of the US government, and often dismissed as supporting conspiracy theories. Later, however, the CIA became the defendant in several lawsuits filed by “volunteers” who had suffered permanent damages in the MK-ULTRA experiments and their relatives, the most important of which resulted in a 1988 settlement. Through the lawsuits, several key documents became public.

by Massimo Introvigne — We are at it again. New books are launched with great fanfare that revive old theories of “brainwashing,” and almost everybody, from Donald Trump to Bill Gates, is accused of using “mind control techniques” to gather followers. And of course, that they use “brainwashing” is an old accusation against groups discriminated and labeled as “cults.” Do these techniques exist? That the answer is “no” is one of the key conclusions of the academic discipline of the study of new religious movements (NRM studies). A tiny minority of scholars of religious movements, with connections to the anti-cult activists, rejected this conclusion, seceded from the majority, and created a different discipline of “cultic studies.” However, as Mike Ashcraft emphasized in his authoritative textbook on the academic study of new religious movements, while NRM studies are generally regarded as a legitimate part of the scholarly study of religions, “cultic studies” are “not mainstream scholarship.”

by Alessandro Amicarelli — Today is 2021 International Day Commemorating the Victims of Acts of Violence Based on Religion or Belief. Whilst most international observers are posing their eyes on the future of Afghanistan under the rule of talibans, few observe the limitations to human rights and other fundamental freedoms in some democratic countries. Among the largest democracies of the world, both India and Pakistan are responsible for violations of human rights and freedom of religion and belief of their citizens and residents at different levels. Also in the European continent there are situations of concern.

by Gao Zihao — On August 17, 2021, the CCP’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection informed that it had expelled Peng Bo from the Party. The decision was taken “with the approval of the Central Committee of the CCP.” Peng Bo is the former deputy director of the Office of the Leading Group for Prevention and Handling of Xie Jiao Issues, i.e., one of the top bureaucrats involved in the repression of religious movements banned and included in the list of the xie jiao, a word the CCP itself translates into English as “cults” or “evil cults,” but whose meaning is “heterodox teachings.” CCP bureaucrats rise and fell continuously, but it is not common that press releases are issued, the approval of the Central Committee is mentioned, and detailed explanations are added.

Six scholars look at the European anti-cult federation, and conclude it is seriously dangerous for religious liberty.

By Luigi Berzano (University of Torino, Italy), Boris Falikov (Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow, Russia), Willy Fautré (Human Rights Without Frontiers, Brussels, Belgium), Liudmyla Filipovich (Lesya Ukrainka Eastern European National University, Lutsk, Ukraine), Massimo Introvigne (Center for Studies on New Religions, Torino, Italy), and Bernadette Rigal-Cellard (University Bordeaux-Montaigne, Bordeaux, France)

by Massimo Introvigne — A historical decision was rendered by the 4th Senate of the State Administrative Court of Appeal of Bavaria, with reasons communicated on August 3, 2021, overturning a first instance judgment by the Administrative Court of Munich dated August 28, 2019, on the controversial issue of a “sect filter” used by the City of Munich. ”Sect filters” are documents required by local governments, businesses and political parties in some areas of Germany. Anybody looking for a job, or for doing business with these institutions and companies, should sign a statement that s/he is not a Scientologist nor does s/he “use the technology of L. Ron Hubbard” (the founder of Scientology).

FOB Scientific Committee member Dr Giuseppe Macrina passed away in Florence on 12 August 2021.

A legal consultant specialising in tenders, author of manuals on legal subjects and a journalist, he was interested in religions and collaborated in this field with CESNUR, the Centre for the Study of New Religions, in Turin.

FOB expresses its closeness to his family, trusting that his commitment and passion can be carried on by new generations.

European Federation for Freedom of Belief (FOB)

by Massimo Introvigne — In a previous article reviewing the recently published report for the years 2018–2020 of the French MIVILUDES, the French Inter-ministerial mission for monitoring and combating cultic deviances (dérives sectaires), I noted how it suffers from a fundamental methodological problem. The report is a building built using as bricks the saisines, i.e., the complaints against a religious movement that everybody can send to the MIVILUDES by letter or by using an online form. For pages and pages, the report summarizes and quotes the saisines. There is no indication that the saisines have been verified by confronting them with the existing scholarly literature on the accused religious movements, or by interviewing members in good standing of the religious organizations, who may have a totally different point of view.

by Fabrizio d'Agostini — The ‘defector syndrome' refers to the behavior, considerations and reasoning of individuals who, having left a group, party, religion, denomination, turn against their past friends and comrades and recount negative facts or events in which they have participated, making criticisms and becoming witnesses to a variety of accusations. The syndrome does not affect all former members, in fact proportionally very few. With reference to religious movements, which appear to be the most studied and monitored trend groups, and in which the turnover is greatest (statistically, participation or affiliation lasts two years, both incoming and outgoing), the defector’s syndrome affects about 15% of the 2%.

by Massimo Introvigne — The MIVILUDES, the French Inter-ministerial mission for monitoring and combating cultic deviances (dérives sectaires), which is now part of the Ministry of the Interior, published last week its report for the years 2018-2020. Like Diogenes wandering with his lantern in search of an honest man, the MIVILUDES wanders around France with the anti-cult ideology as its lantern looking for dishonest “cultic deviances.” Dérives sectaires is a quintessentially French formula and invention, of which MIVILUDES is no less proud than of the Tour Eiffel. It comes out handy to find “cultic” dangers even where no “cult” (which should be translated into French with the corresponding derogatory word, secte) exists.

by Juan Sanchez Gil — The written judgment of the Bavarian State Administrative Court of Appeal (file no. 4 B 20.3008) in the case of a Munich Scientologist against the city of Munich is now available. The case dealt with the city E-Mobile Funding Directive, issued for the purpose of environmental protection, and the city´s refusal to provide a grant for the purchase of an E-Bike to the plaintiff, solely by reason of her adherence to Scientology. The Bavarian State Admin Court condemned the city practice with unmistakable words as an unjustified interference in the religious freedom guarantee of Art. 4 of the German Constitution and as a violation of Art. 3 of the Constitution which prohibits unequal treatment before the law.

by Hu Zimo — Totalitarian regimes have a thing for burning books, and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) joyfully burn dissident books and destroys other material not approved of by the regime. In the festive climate of the 100^th anniversary year of the CCP, it is recommended that this is done in public ceremonies to “educate the masses.” To explain how these modern auto-da-fés should be organized, a “pilot” book-burning and DVD-destroying ceremony was organized by the Ministry of Public Security in Kunming, Yunnan province, on July 16, in two locations. The aim was to show how to publicly destroy illegal religious material, in this case coming mostly from Falun Gong and The Church of Almighty God.

by Massimo Introvigne and Alessandro Amicarelli — The first three articles of our series presented two conflicting, irreconcilable narratives about Jaroslav Dobeš and Barbora Plášková, who are currently detained in the Immigration Detention Center of Bagong Diwa, near Manila, in circumstances international NGOs have described as unsanitary and dangerous. Plášková was separated from her son, who is also in the Philippines, when he was ten months old, and has been able to see him only twice during her six years of detention. According to the authorities of the Czech Republic, the rituals of “unhooking” in the Guru Jára Path performed by its leader Dobeš with the assistance of Plášková, which as we have explained were based on ritual intercourse within a framework of sacred sexuality rooted in the Tantra, amounted to rape in the case of at least one woman, for which a final decision has been rendered sentencing Dobeš and Plášková to jail terms respectively of five and a half and five years.

by Massimo Introvigne and Alessandro Amicarelli — In the first two articles of this series, we presented the history of the Guru Jára Path, its interaction with the Czech anti-cult movement, and its teachings on sacred sexuality that led to the criminal prosecution. As we mentioned in the second article, the police’s attention focused on the ritual of unhooking, where female devotees were “cleansed” of the negative psychic residues of their past sexual experiences through ritual intercourse with the guru. The anti-cult movement had put the police on the track of the Guru Jára Path since the early 2000s, but the situation precipitated after Guru Jára and his main co-worker Barbora Plášková announced that they were leaving Europe definitively and move to Asia in 2007. A preliminary investigation of Jára had been started based on the complaint of a woman who had been unhooked but, rather than to the ritual, objected to Jára’s alleged misrepresentation of his own Tantric qualifications and initiations. Although before their departure Jára and Plášková had been interrogated, but no charges had been filed at the end of the preliminary investigation, the police placed both Jára in 2007 and Plášková in the 2009 in their wanted list since their whereabouts were unknown.

by Massimo Introvigne and Alessandro Amicarelli — Guru Jára, the Czech spiritual teacher Jaroslav Dobeš and his main co-worker Barbora Plášková are seeking asylum in the Philippines and fighting extradition to the Czech republic, where they have been found guilty of seven counts of sexual abuse of female disciples. In our first article, we told the story of the movement Dobeš founded, the Guru Jára Path. In a third article, we will discuss the Czech court case. But the latter is inseparable from Jára’s teachings, which are the subject matter of this second article. The main source of the teachings of Guru Jára is Shivaite Tantrism, although his books also include references to Egyptian, Tibetan, Christian, and Kabbalistic teachings. While he quotes several authors and masters, Jára believes that all genuine esoteric teachings can be traced to one source, which started being spread throughout the world during the reign of pharaoh Nyuserre Ini, the sixth ruler of the Egyptian Fifth Dynasty, who lived in the second half of the 25^th century BCE.

by Massimo Introvigne and Alessandro Amicarelli — In the Philippines, two Czech citizens, Jaroslav Dobeš and Barbora Plášková, who have lived in detention centers for immigrants for six years in very difficult conditions, are seeking political asylum and invoking religious liberty. On the face of it, it may seem an unlikely claim. Dobeš has been sentenced in the Czech Republic for having raped or molested seven women, and Plášková for having helped him. The Czech Republic is obviously a democratic country. So, what is the asylum request all about? We claim some knowledge of the case, having been the only non-Czech scholars to have written or lectured about the Guru Jára Path, the group Dobeš founded in 1996. Some have objected that we took at face value statements by members of the group, and certainly we did interview them, but we also read court proceedings, articles by critics, and the largely hostile coverage by Czech media.

by Massimo Introvigne — Once, there were the Ministerials to Advance Religious Freedom, where the U.S. Department of State invited foreign ministers of dozens of countries to gather and discuss religious liberty. Once, too, there was a U.S. Ambassador-at-large to promote international religious freedom, which during the Trump administration was former governor Sam Brownback. So far, the Biden administration has not appointed an Ambassador-at-large for religious freedom, nor has it organized additional Ministerials on the subject. But this has not prevented Ambassador Brownback, now as a private activist, to continue his work and gather 1,000 religious and human rights leaders in Washington DC for an International Religious Freedom Summit on July 13-15, 2021.

Following the invasion of Eastern Tibet by Mao's troops, euphemistically called the People's Liberation Army, on May 23, 1951 a 17-point agreement was signed between the representatives of Tibet and the authorities of revolutionary China, with which the Tibetans recognized Chinese sovereignty over Tibet under the threat that otherwise all of Tibet would be invaded. On the 70^th anniversary of the agreement, Chinese President Xi Jinping went to Tibet to legitimize the persecutory work of his regime and his predecessors.

IInteresting article by Andrea Menegotto. He is a scholar of history, sociology of religions and religious sciences, and a researcher and director of CESNUR (Center for Studies on New Religions) - founded and directed by Massimo Introvigne) and president of CESPOC (Centro Studies on Popular Culture). Member of the SIPR (Italian Society of Psychology of Religion), he is the author of numerous publications and volumes, he collaborates with various periodicals, universities and training institutions and has held various consultancy positions in the field of security related to religious phenomena at various Italian police institutions.

by Massimo Introvigne — I had never heard of Professor Roman Kon, from the Moscow Theological Academy, until somebody called my attention on the fact that he got in trouble after having been accused of “taking the side of Massimo Introvigne,” apparently a serious crime in Russia. From the answer he posted among the comments to the article attacking him by Vladimir Martinovich, lecturer on “cults” in Belarus’ Minsk Theological Academy, it seems that Kon did indeed his homework in reading what I wrote on the issue of brainwashing, and came to conclusions that are a matter of course among Western scholars of new religious movements.