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SPEARHEADING SOCIAL REFORM
As the German government has denied these ongoing human rights abuses, Scientologists have made the truth about the religious discrimination in Germany broadly known through international public information campaigns in major world newspapers.
Scientologists have also brought the matter of discrimination in Germany to the attention of international bodies and the results have been far-reaching for churches and groups that are the targets of such discrimination. In annual reports of the Special Rapporteur of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, he has warned the international community about those countries in which individual freedoms were most severely threatened. Following his eleven-day visit to Germany, with senior officials at federal and state levels, leaders and members of minority religions, the Rapporteur issued his findings in March 1998, which exposed a wide range of religious minorities which were being subjected to intolerance, suspicion and discrimination.
The Rapporteur’s reports expanded upon a series of five successive US State Department human rights reports. These State Department reports, which strongly criticized government-instigated discrimination against religious and ethnic groups, also warned of growing antisemitism in Germany.
Other international human rights bodies have issued similar reports. These organizations include Amnesty International, the Organization on Security and Cooperation in Europe (the “Helsinki Commission”), a British ad hoc human rights committee of lords and scholars and the Human Rights Centre of Essex University in England – in all, seventeen separate reports critical of Germany’s treatment of religious and racial minorities.
 
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