See what the french govt official Mission to Combat Cults says about the US stupid rants:

http://home.worldnet.fr/gonnet/mils2001eng.pdf

roger THIRD REPORT BY THE STATE DEPARTMENT OF THE
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

The third report by the State Department of the United States of America on religious freedom in the world (outside the United States) was published in late October 2001.

Without wishing to become involved in controversy about the international legitimacy of a report of this kind in the view of the US authorities, the Mission nevertheless feels it is necessary to comment on certain points. First and foremost, the report appears largely to reproduce statements from previous reports year after year. Although we can accept that to a certain extent the situation does not change radically from one year to the next, repetition of the same findings tends to give the impression that those responsible for drawing up the report worked on the basis of the findings mentioned in the two previous years rather than attempting to present anything new. In the case of France, this involved the use of vague, ambiguous terms, opinions from unspecified sources ("some observers"), a hotchpotch of erroneous statements, excessive generalisations and laboured responses. As a result, parts of the report seem repetitious. In addition, the report's editors themselves state that investigators in their Offices of International Religious Freedom visited "more than a dozen countries"

(only seven are cited), which is rather few considering the number of countries in the world. This means that the American embassies are responsible for drafting the report for most countries and they generally reproduce the same text, with minor changes, year after year. In the Executive Summary, the report has a section under the same questionable title as last year - "Stigmatisation of some religions by wrongfully associating them with dangerous cults." In this section, it repeats its strange accusation (without offering any proof) against "The governments of a few countries that in an attempt to protect their citizens from dangerous or harmful groups, have adopted discriminating laws and policies". The report continues, "By blurring the distinctions between religions and violent or fraudulent groups, the governments of these countries have disadvantaged groups that may appear to be different or unusual, but are in fact peaceful and honest". As this Mission stated in its 2000 report, this allegation would suggest that the State Department has itself drawn up a list distinguishing between "peaceful and honest" religious groups and "dangerous or harmful" pseudo-religious groups. This assessment by the State Department of whether or not a group is religious would appear to constitute a blatant breach of the American Constitution which, in its famous First Amendment (much used in the US), forbids the State from discriminating on the grounds of religion. If the United States have indeed been obliged to draw up such lists, it would be useful if they were

53 Association of the Triumphant Vajra and followers of the Order of the Solar Temple" as "minority religious groups".

We also note that while calling on nations around the world to promote and protect religious freedom, the State Department calls upon countries such as France to relax legislative measures: "In all of these countries, existing criminal law is adequate for the purpose of dealing with criminal behaviour by individuals or groups" . There is then an unacceptable conclusion, totally malevolent and defamatory since it suggests - without any justification, however vague - that in countries such as Austria, France, Belgium and Germany "new laws or policies that outlaw or stigmatise religious expression can put religious freedom at risk".

While the account given in the US report on the new French law (called the About-Picard Law) published in the Official Gazette on 13 June 2001 contains virtually no criticism and could pass for being fairly objective, at the end it refers to concerns on the part of French Catholics and Protestants but not on the part of the American observers.

Since the Mission itself was cited by the editors of the US Report, we would remind them that the Chairman of the French Protestant Federation protested on 15 May 2001 (cf.

AFP dispatch 151623) that "the section on France in the Department of State Annual Report on International Religious Freedom for 2001 is very poor since it is based on information from biased observers ". Even worse, the US Report falsely alleges that the Council of Europe condemned the new About-Picard Law in a Statement issued on 26 April 2001. This claim is even more regrettable in view of the fact that it had already been refuted by the French government in April.

On 26 April 2001, a group of parliamentary members of the Council of Europe did submit a proposal to the Parliamentary Assembly requesting the French parliament to postpone the vote on the About-Picard Law. This proposal was rejected.

In addition, the President of the Council of Ministers of the Council of Europe wrote a letter on the same day, "officially confirming that the Council of Europe had never criticised France over this matter" . However, in July the US authorities were already referring to "a Statement by the Council of Europe on 26 April 2001 expressing the opinion that the French Law could be regarded as discriminatory and constituting a violation of human rights." Despite the fact that the French government reacted immediately to refute this claim, the Department of State report published in late October shamelessly reiterates the false allegations made in July word for word. As in last year's report, there is a long section on Scientology. It appears that the number of proceedings instituted against Scientology is increasing, and public opinion in France seems to be set against the movement (the Panda Software case). In addition, the report seems to find it regrettable that the Scientology movement has not been granted tax exemption on religious grounds in France, while it does include a reminder that only one country in Europe (Sweden) has granted the movement such status. And Sweden has just decided to close down an educational establishment run by Scientology, on the grounds that the teaching methods used do not comply with Swedish educational standards.

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