Religious Freedom and Human Rights
Religious freedom adopts a more fundamental meaning when placed in the context of iniquities afforded minority religions in some European countries—treatment condemned by the European Court of Human Rights and by individuals and groups in the international human rights community.
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Freedom provides in-depth coverage of religious freedom issues in its European editions. | |
Oppression of the Jehovah’s Witnesses in Greece, for example, led to two decisions by the European Court which denounced the Greek government’s blatant violations of international human rights treaties. Freedom explored the motivations for the Greek persecution of Jehovah’s Witnesses and other groups, and pried into the work of a self-proclaimed “sect expert” who led a propaganda drive against various minority religions in the country. Freedom’s report documented the sect expert’s ignoble past with the Greek fascist junta of the 1970s—including his involvement in torturing Jehovah’s Witness conscientious objectors.
Freedom has also examined the persecution of religious minorities in its even more insidious forms, especially in countries where God-negating dogma has ruled for the greater part of recent history. In this regard, the influence of psychiatry in the 20th century has left indelible marks on religious freedom. This is perhaps best illustrated in Russia, where Freedom reported on adherents of minority religions occupying the beds of psychiatric asylums that were believed to have held only political dissidents.
In countries with a more enlightened history vis-à-vis religion, insecurity yet exists over the growth—sometimes very rapid—of minority and newer religious groups. In recent years, this insecurity has been met by parliamentary “commissions” which inquire into the beliefs and practices of such groups and frequently recommend restrictions be placed on them. Further, the sources from whom these commissions draw their reports are often the same ill-intentioned individuals whose unfounded propaganda about minority religions incited the insecurity in the first place.
Freedom has been an outspoken voice in condemning the establishment and outcomes of such inquiry commissions. Since a federal “observatory on sects” was established in France in 1996 as a result of one such parliamentary inquiry, Freedom’s coverage has been instrumental in fostering understanding that the parliamentary commission report which led to the observatory was based on disinformation. Groups targeted in the report not only pose no danger to society, but include the religion of the U.S. President—Baptist—and Catholic organizations whose founders were recently canonized by the Pope.
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