Subject: Moscow Scientologists' License Revoked
From: Center for Civil Society International (ccsi@u.washington.edu)
Date: Mon Oct 18 1999 - 01:03:41 EDT
The following item appeared in the RIPNet (Russian Intercessory Prayer
Network) list <RipNet@compuserve.com>.
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CHURCH OF SCIENTOLOGY HAS LICENSE REVOKED
by Oksana Yablokova
The Moscow Times
8 October 1999
The Moscow center of the Church of Scientology, a controversial
international organization, has lost its license after a city district
court ruled that the group's registration documents were not in order. The
Humanitarian Hubbard Center, which has been operating in Moscow for six
years, said Wednesday's ruling was politically motivated and part of a
Russian Orthodox Church effort to limit the influence of other faiths.
Prosecutors say they first began looking into the center's activities
about two years ago after receiving dozens of complaints from parents
about the Scientologists' methods of teaching their children.
Earlier this year, the city prosecutor's office and the tax police raided
the center's office in northeast Moscow, confiscating boxes of paperwork.
"We examined their documentation and found they had broken the law when
registering," Yevgeny Manerkin of the prosecutor's office said Thursday.
In the registration documents submitted to the Justice Ministry, three of
the 10 people listed as founders of the center were found to have no
connection to it at all, Manerkin said.
Center spokesman Alexei Danchenkov said the documents were corrected in
1997, when the group reapplied for registration, but the prosecutor at the
trial persisted in referring to the original documents.
He said the center, which is registered as a nonprofit organization, was
also under investigation by the tax police.
Danchenkov said he believes the Scientologists are being targeted for
political reasons.
"These are methods of eradicating nonprofit organizations and are tied to
the ongoing struggle of the Orthodox Church to re-establish its complete
dominance," he said.
Russia adopted a new law in 1997 limiting the activities of nontraditional
faiths, which has been used to crack down on religious groups.
The Church of Scientology was founded by science fiction writer L. Ron
Hubbard in the 1950s and now claims to have 8 million followers worldwide.
Its headquarters are in Los Angeles.
Hubbard's books, most prominently the basic Scientological text
"Dianetics," are published in more than 30 languages and distributed in
over 100 countries.
Scientologists call themselves a religious group and the group is
registered as such in the United States and Australia. European countries
have largely refused to grant Scientology tax-free religious status and
the group has faced a number of high-profile trials, particularly in
Germany and France. In 1996, the German government announced it was
starting a federal campaign to keep Scientologists from certain public
jobs such as counseling and teaching.
The Humanitarian Hubbard Center in Moscow holds classes for about 200
students a week in spiritual self-improvement. The center also sells a
large quantity of books written by Hubbard and collects membership dues.
The center was still operating Thursday with students attending the
classes.
The Scientologists have 10 days to appeal the Ostankinsky district court's
decision, which Danchenkov said they will do. "We will keep fighting. I'm
sure we will be able to protect the center," he said.
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