» Continued from Part 1

=== Scientology
15. Hospital says it will reduce `take downs'
16. Schools Notebook
17. Just say ''No'' to Scientology literature in the library

=== Buddhism
18. Revered Buddhist Leader Is Accused Of Wrongdoing
18a Vietnam takes action against Buddhist leader

=== Islam
19. Musical Canceled in Netherlands
20. 'Holy warrior' T-shirts rile US sportswear giant
21. Muslim prisoner's plight sparks stern reminder to private jail over religious beliefs

=== Mungiki
22. Police on Mungiki alert

=== Hate Groups
23. Butler says he won't file Idaho tax return
24. German Court Targets Online Denier of Holocaust
25. Australian holocaust revisionist rejects court's Internet finding
25a. Lawyer leaves $650,000 to hate groups
26. In 2 Incidents, Germany's Neo-Nazi Fears Prove Wrong

» Part 3

=== Other News
27. China blows up churches and temples in religious crackdown
28. U.S. Critical as China Cracks Down on Religion
29. Religious Association Launches Cult Probe
30. Bell takes stand against far right group in Essex
30a. Court tells Rasta lawyer to spill the seeds
31. Cult Fire At Lagos State University
32. IRS Church Seizure Sparks Fears
33. Political Polygamists Coming Out of the Closet
34. RSS pamphlets: Sikhs are part of Hinduism
35. Ex-minister stands by 'biblical rod'

=== Death Penalty
36. Death Penalty Doubts

=== Noted
37. Constitution Protects Beliefs, Not Practices

=== The Virgin Around The Corner
38. Church hails Britney as virgin role model


=== Scientology

15. Hospital says it will reduce `take downs' Use of restraints revisited
Telegram & Gazette Worcester, Dec. 7, 2000
http://beta.yellowbrix.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
WESTBORO -- The Department of Mental Health has cleared Westboro State Hospital of excessively restraining juvenile patients, although it said the hospital plans to reduce the number of physical ''take downs.''

The DMH investigation completes action taken by state and federal authorities on an unusual complaint filed in September by the Citizen's Commission on Human Rights, an organization formed by the Church of Scientology to investigate psychiatric abuse. No wrongdoing was found, but the DMH said it plans to reduce the use of physical restraints and seclusion of patients at its state hospitals, including Westboro.

Massachusetts DMH hospitals, including Westboro, use a controversial restraint technique in which multiple staff members pin an agitated patient face down on the ground. The Hartford Courant published a series of articles in 1998 that found more than 100 deaths from restraints went unreported from 1988 to 1998 at hospitals nationwide. News organizations and the federal General Accounting Office found several more deaths were associated with restraints, and that many of them went unreported.
(...)

Last month, the federal Health Care Finance Administration said the human rights commission's allegations were unsubstantiated, after its own investigation. On Monday the DMH released a redacted decision that came to the same conclusion.

Kevin M. Hall, New England director of the commission on human rights, called the DMH investigation silly and self-serving.
(...)

The DMH's local governing body, the Metro-Suburban Area Office, said Mr. Hall's allegations were unsubstantiated.
(...)

In a random sampling by the DMH of 33 restraint cases this year at Westboro State Hospital, none of the patients filed a complaint over restraints, even though the hospital is obligated by law to instruct the patients that they have the right to do so. According to the report, some of the patients interviewed said they feared retaliation from staff if they complained about a restraint.

John S. Widdison, a spokesman for the Department of Mental Health, called the human rights commission allegations ''unusual'' because a religious organization had never before filed a complaint challenging a state hospital's restraint methods. Most complaints are generated by individuals who challenge specific incidents, he said.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]

* The Scientology business is known for its hatred of psychiatry. Its front organizations hijack issues such as ''religious freedom,'' ''human rights concerns'' and ''anti-drugs efforts'' in their attacks against those who criticize the cult.

For details, see

The Scientology Story - Part 6: Attacking the attacker
Los Angeles Times, June 24-29, 1990

Also:
Scientology II: CCHR and Narconon (By Louis West)

Hubbard begs for psychiatric help

Scientology and Medical Fraud


The cult's anti-drug efforts especially target children:

16. Schools Notebook
Savannah Morning News, Dec. 11, 2000
http://www.savannahmorningnews.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
(...) The Drug-Free Marshals program is an educational anti-drug program sponsored by the Church of Scientology International. Geared toward children between the ages of 5 and 12, this program has grown from its beginning in 1993 to an international anti-drug program.

What makes the Drug-Free Marshals program different from other programs is how the children are educated on the dangers of drugs. The children learn how drugs affect their body, why drugs can make people feel better and how drugs stop a person from reaching their goals.

To make this program more accessible to children in Georgia, an essay contest is being launched throughout the state. The topic of the essay contest is ''Anything is Possible When You Are Drug Free''. All essays should be received by Dec. 15. This contest is open to all youth between the ages of 5-14 and all entries should be no longer than one page in length. The name, age and address of the child entering the contest should be included in the submission. Children entering the contest will receive an official Drug-Free Marshals Pledge.

Essays can be mailed to: Susan Webb, Church of Scientology of Georgia, 1611 Mt. Vernon Road, Dunwoody, GA 30338.
[...entire relevant section...]

* Scientology reaches into schools through Narconon
''The Scientology group Narconon Inc. of Everett is recruiting children in the schools for what critics say is an unproven and possibly dangerous anti-drug program. The church denies strong ties to the group - which receives taxpayer money - but the Boston Herald has found otherwise.''

17. Just say ''No'' to Scientology literature in the library
Passauer Neue Presse (Germany), Dec. 9, 2000
Translation: CISAR
http://cisar.org/001209b.htm
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Altoetting (sh). The building committee representing the city council has turned down an application from Scientology in which the sect asked that their literature be considered for the city's library system. They founded their application in a letter to the city saying that forming an opinion was part of the basic right of freedom of opinion. And that freedom would be present only if their books were available in all libraries. The city council, however, did not follow that argumentation. They unanimously decided against the application so that Scientology literature continues to be excluded from city libraries.
[...entire item...]

* The publisher of Religion News Report agrees with the German government's view of Scientology:

''The German government considers the Scientology organization a commercial enterprise with a history of taking advantage of vulnerable individuals and an extreme dislike of any criticism. The government is also concerned that the organization's totalitarian structure and methods may pose a risk to Germany's democratic society. Several kinds of evidence have influenced this view of Scientology, including the organization's activities in the United States.''

=== Buddhism

18. Revered Buddhist Leader Is Accused Of Wrongdoing
Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Dec. 9, 2000
http://beta.yellowbrix.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
The leader of a Buddhist temple in Redmond who claims millions of followers worldwide is accused of coercing a female worshipper into a sexual relationship.

The 41-year-old woman is suing Grand Master Sheng-Yen Lu for ''negligent pastoral counseling,'' claiming Lu told her she would die if she didn't join him in an ancient ''twin-body blessing.''

''That's sexual intercourse,'' said Seattle attorney Karen Goater, who represents the woman.

The lawsuit was filed Wednesday in King County Superior Court. Lu and Ling Shen Ching Tze Temple are named as defendants.

The woman, identified only as S.H.C. for fear of retribution, is seeking unspecified damages.
(...)

The president of the temple's board of directors, Master Teck Hui Teng, said he was surprised and disappointed by the suit.

''This is the first and only allegation of this nature,'' Teng said in a prepared statement. ''No one at the temple has any reason to believe the accusations against Grand Master Lu are true.''

Barrett said she will try to have the case tossed out. She argues that negligent pastoral counseling simply doesn't exist as a cause of action under Washington civil law.
(...)

An estimated 4 million people around the world are followers of Lu's teachings, according to temple officials.

Lu, 55, is revered by his students as a ''living Buddha.'' There are more than 300 chapters of his True Buddha School, including 30 temples. He has also written scores of Chinese-language books on Buddhism and Taoism.

Lu immigrated to America from Taiwan in the early 1980s. In 1984, he built the temple on a cul-de-sac in a south Redmond neighborhood.

The woman suing Lu joined one of the sect's temples in Malaysia in 1992, according to the suit. She came to the Redmond temple in 1996 to receive blessings from Lu.

Married with three children, the woman told reporters this week that she suffered from a panic disorder and was having trouble sleeping. In March 1997, she said Lu persuaded her to have sex with him in exchange for an ancient Tibetan blessing that could heal her.

At one point, Lu, a self-proclaimed psychic, told the woman that she would die in July 1999 if she didn't continue their relationship, according to the suit.

By the end of that summer, the woman said she ended the relationship, convinced she had been deceived.

She decided to press the suit, she said, to expose Lu as a fraud.

Her attorney, Rebecca Roe of Seattle, also accuses Lu in the suit of preying on other female followers.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


18a. Vietnam takes action against Buddhist leader
Reuters, Dec. 13, 2000
http://live.altavista.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
HANOI, Dec 13 (Reuters) - Vietnam said on Wednesday it was taking legal action against a senior official of a Buddhist sect, but denied allegations that it restricted religious freedom and that police had brutally beaten his sons.

``Ha Hai is an individual who has many times violated Vietnamese laws, and now is being dealt with in accordance with Vietnamese laws,'' Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Phan Thuy Thanh said in a statement.

Thanh did not elaborate on the legal action or the offence which Hai, secretary general of the Hoa Hao Buddhist church, was alleged to have committed.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


=== Islam

19. Musical Canceled in Netherlands
AP, Dec. 11, 2000
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands -- The Dutch directors of a musical about one of the wives of Islam's Prophet Muhammad are baffled by threats that led the entire Muslim cast to walk out and cancel the show.

Rehearsals had been scheduled to begin last week for ''Aisha and the Women of Medina,'' the highlight of next year's European Cultural Capital festival in Rotterdam.

But the eight Arabic-speaking singers, actors and a composer from Morocco abruptly withdrew late last month, Gerda Roest of the Onafhankelijk Toneel production company said Monday.

''We still don't know exactly what happened,'' she said. ''All we know is that a fax was sent from unknown persons in Rotterdam to a newspaper and the prime minister in Morocco ... which warned the cast: 'If you do this you'll have the same fate as Salman Rushdie.'''

Dutch media suggested the fax came from a local Muslim group. Roest declined to speculate on its source.

In withdrawing, cast members sent their own fax to the show's director, Gerrit Timmers, which ended with the words: ''Fear reigns over here.''

Islam forbids fictional or artistic representations of its 7th century prophet, his family or disciples. Dozens of literary works deemed blasphemous have been banned in Muslim countries because they depict figures in the Quran, the Muslim holy book.

Novelists such as Rushdie, author of ''The Satanic Verses,'' have even been threatened with death. Egyptian Nobel laureate Nagib Mahfouz was stabbed in 1994 because of a book he wrote depicting religious figures in allegorical form. Bangladeshi author and women's rights activist Taslima Nasrin went into hiding in exile for four years after suggesting the Quran should be rewritten.

The musical was based on a prize-winning book, ''Far from Medina,'' by Algerian-born French author Assia Djebar.

In it, 9-year-old Aisha is thrilled to become the third and favorite wife of the much-older Muhammad, but becomes jealous following his betrothal to a fourth spouse.

Timmers said he chose the book because it gives a progressive view of Islam.

''It demonstrates that our idea of Islam as a repressive religion toward women is inaccurate,'' Timmers told De Volkskrant newspaper.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


20. 'Holy warrior' T-shirts rile US sportswear giant
South China Morning Post (Hong Kong)/AP, Dec. 13, 2000
http://www.scmp.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Not content with stealing Nike's name, trademark pirates are using it to glorify America's prime terrorist suspect.

T-shirts have shown up in Afghanistan and neighbouring Pakistan featuring the US sportswear firm's logo alongside a drawing of an AK-47 rifle and praise for Osama bin Laden: ''The great mujahid [holy warrior] of Islam.''

''Jihad is our mission,'' the T-shirts proclaim, using the Islamic term for holy war.

''We find it highly offensive,'' said Kirk Stewart, vice-president for corporate communications at Nike's headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon, after seeing a photo of one of the shirts.
(...)

The T-shirts sell in Pakistan for 100 rupees (HK$13). Also on sale for a few cents apiece are posters featuring a calendar and a picture of a helicopter with the slogan: ''Look out United States, Osama is coming.''
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


21. Muslim prisoner's plight sparks stern reminder to private jail over religious beliefs
Sydney Morning Herald (Australia), Dec. 11, 2000
http://www.smh.com.au/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
The owners of NSW's only private jail will be told to respect prisoners' religious beliefs after the move to Long Bay jail of a Muslim man who refused to be administered methadone during a sacred fasting period.

The 20-year-old man - serving a two-year, seven-month sentence at Junee Correctional Centre for robbery, assault, intimidation and dishonestly obtaining money by deception - refused on religious grounds to take methadone because it would break his Ramadan fast.

Being treated for opiate addiction, he asked to receive his methadone treatment after sunset to avoid breaking a fasting requirement of the holy month.

A spokesman for the Department of Corrective Services said the prison's owners - Australasian Correctional Management (ACM), the same company that runs the Woomera detention centre at the heart of a Federal inquiry into allegations of sexual abuse - had refused to administer methadone after sunset.

All State prisons were told in a department directive in October how to make allowance for the treatment of Muslim prisoners during Ramadan.

Greens MP Ms Lee Rhiannon raised the alarm after an Islamic organisation contacted her about the plight of the prisoner.

''It would be as offensive as making an Orthodox Jewish detainee eat pig meat - or stopping an orthodox Catholic eating fish on Friday,'' she said.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


=== Mungiki

22. Police on Mungiki alert
The Nation (Kenya), Dec. 12, 2000
http://www.nationaudio.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Embu police will counter a threat by Mungiki members to circumcise women forcibly.

Police boss King'ori Mwangi said the sect had circulated leaflets in the district, saying they would target all uncircumcised women in a ''door-to-door campaign''.

He said his officers were on the alert and called on the public to be calm.

The leaflets said that the drive was supposed to start last month, but it had been postponed indefinitely.

The papers said that after the circumcision, there would be recruitment of new members into the sect, followed by a baptism ceremony.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


=== Hate Groups

23. Butler says he won't file Idaho tax return
The Spokesman-Review, Dec. 12, 2000
http://www.spokesmanreview.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Coeur d'Alene _ Aryan Nations founder Richard Butler told creditors he has not filed an Idaho income tax return since he bought his Hayden Lake property in 1972.

He added that he does not plan to submit a return for the year 2000.

''I have nothing to file,'' Butler said as he met with creditors on Monday at the U.S. District Court building.
(...)

Butler, who represented himself at the meeting, said no bankruptcy attorney in Idaho, Washington or Montana would handle his case.

''This is an unwritten conspiracy by anti-Christ people to shut me up,'' he said. ''I'm a little upset about it.''

Butler, 82, has moved from his 20-acre compound into a house in Hayden. Vincent Bertollini, backer of the white supremacist 11th-Hour Remnant Messenger, purchased the house.

A jury determined on Sept. 7 that Butler was 90 percent responsible for an attack by Aryan Nations security guards on Victoria and Jason Keenan as they drove past Butler's compound on July 1, 1998.

The $6.3 million verdict against Butler and three of his Aryan Nations followers immediately forced the Aryan Nations leader to declare bankruptcy.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


24. German Court Targets Online Denier of Holocaust
Reuters, Dec. 12, 2000
http://news.excite.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
KARLSRUHE, Germany (Reuters) - A German court on Tuesday ordered the retrial of an Australian for denying on the Internet that the Holocaust happened.

The man, Frederick Toeben, had previously been acquitted in Germany on a charge of spreading the so-called ''Auschwitz lie'' over the Internet. In a judgement with possible implications for regulation of the global computer network, the Federal Supreme Court ruled that former schoolteacher Toeben could be charged with inciting racial hatred under German law because the offending material, denying the deaths of millions of Jews during the Nazi era, could be accessed by German Internet users.

However the court acknowledged bringing to justice those responsible for such material was another matter.

''The question is now what is the possibility of an extradition,'' said a court spokesman. The German-born Toeben was not in court.

Toeben was sentenced by a regional court to 10 months in jail last November for distributing leaflets in Germany alleging that the Holocaust did not happen, a crime under German law.

But he was acquitted on charges of doing the same over the Internet after the court said the fact the Web site was run on computers installed outside Germany meant it was outside its jurisdiction.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]

* More about holocaust deniers
http://www.apologeticsindex.org/h00.html#hdeniers
[Story no longer online? Read this]


25. Australian holocaust revisionist rejects court's Internet finding
AP, Dec. 13, 2000
http://www.cnn.com/2000/ASIANOW/australasia/12/12/australia.germany.ap/index.html
[Story no longer online? Read this]
SYDNEY, Australia (AP) -- An Australian Holocaust revisionist said Wednesday he will not remove material from his Internet site despite a German court's finding that it was illegal under German law.

In a case involving Frederick Toben, a German-born Australian citizen, the German Federal Court of Justice found earlier this week that German laws against denying the Holocaust apply to the Internet even if the content originates in another country and is placed there by a non-German.

The ruling in effect gave German prosecutors the power to seek the arrest of neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers wherever they are as long as their Internet site is accessible in Germany.

Toben is unlikely to be prosecuted as a result of the ruling, however, because a trial would require his extradition from Australia, which does not have laws against Holocaust revisionism.
(...)

Toben added that he does not intend to make any changes to his Internet site.

''I someone is offended by the material, they can switch off,'' he said.

Toben heads the Adelaide Institute, an Australian organization devoted to questioning the Holocaust. It has a Web site hosted by an Australian Internet server.

He was arrested in the German city of Mannheim in April 1999 after trying to discuss his ideas with a state prosecutor there and sentenced to 10 months in prison after being found guilty in a German court of denying the killing of millions of Jews by the Nazis during World War II in pamphlets and on the Internet.

He returned to Australia after serving part of the sentence.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]

* Related item, mentioning the Adelaide Institute:
Tentacles of hatred spread over Net
The Age (Australia), Nov. 23, 200

25a. Lawyer leaves $650,000 to hate groups
Tulsa World, Dec. 10, 2000
http://beta.yellowbrix.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
DUXBURY, Mass. -- Richard J. Cotter Jr. seemed to be a member in good standing of the Boston establishment: Phillips Exeter, Harvard and then Harvard Law, service in World War II, a stint as an assistant state attorney general, then private practice.

At his death, though, it became clear that his politics were way out on the fringe.

Shocking some of those who knew him, the lawyer left more than $650,000 of his $5.4 million estate to white supremacist and anti- Semitic causes and figures, including the author of the book ''The Hitler We Loved and Why.''

Robert Leikind, executive director of the Anti-Defamation League in Boston, called the will ''a startling legacy.'' ''These are not groups to be trifled with. They can be extreme, and they can be not only dangerous but inspire people in the most fundamentally undemocratic principles,'' he said.

Cotter's executor, friend and legal colleague, Donald O. Smith, said he was amazed.

''I think Cotter's concerns, perhaps with regard to communism, may have led him into a position sympathetic to people with an affiliation for the Nazi regime. Having never discussed any of this with Mr. Cotter, you should probably understand that I'm just speculating,'' Smith said.
(...)

He left money to care for his horses, to friends, to his niece, to a group that promotes the legacy of a children's author and to a nursing care organization.

But also among the beneficiaries was William L. Pierce, the white- supremacist author of ''The Turner Diaries,'' a novel that prosecutors said inspired Timothy McVeigh's 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building.

Pierce, who got $25,000 in the will, said he knew Cotter for about 30 years but would give no other details.

Cotter left about half a million dollars to James K. Warner, leader of the Louisiana-based New Christian Crusade Church. Warner is a founding member of the American Nazi Party who calls Jews ''sons of the Devil'' and is a close friend of former KKK leader David Duke, according to the Anti-Defamation League.

Cotter also left $100,000 to Ernst Zundel, a Canadian who in the early 1970s wrote pro-Nazi materials under the name Christof Friedrich, including the book ''The Hitler We Loved and Why.''
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


26. In 2 Incidents, Germany's Neo-Nazi Fears Prove Wrong
International Herald Tribune, Dec. 11, 2000
http://www.iht.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
If any two incidents in recent months stoked Germany's worst fears about itself, it was the firebombing of a synagogue in Dusseldorf on the eve of the 10th anniversary of German unification and allegations that a 6-year old boy was killed by neo-Nazis in front of passive bystanders in a small eastern town.

Each underscored a deepening fear that neo Nazism was in the marrow of the new republic and prompted anguished soul-searching about the country's unexorcised ghosts.

But it now appears that neither event had anything to do with neo-Nazis.

The police in Dusseldorf arrested two Arabs last week for the October firebombing, a 20-year-old German citizen of Moroccan origin and a Palestinian who was born in Jordan and has lived in Germany for a number of years. The police said the pair attacked the synagogue out of anger over violence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

And the alleged drowning of the boy, Joseph Kantelberg-Abdulla, becomes murkier by the day with suggestions that his family paid witnesses to give horrifying accounts that fingered, among other people, a relative in a rival business.

''As the examples of Sebnitz and Dusseldorf illustrate, the country's many righteous citizens no longer stop to ask whether something really did happen just the way their collective fear leads them to believe,'' the daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung said in a lead editorial Friday.

The collapse of the initial assumptions does not negate the very real problem of xenophobic violence facing Germany. The country's central law enforcement agency last month reported a 20 percent annual increase in incidents of alleged far-right violence.
(...)

The two cases also exposed the willingness of people in the former West Germany to think the worst of their fellow citizens in the East.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


» Continued in Part 2