Government rethinks anti-sect moves
ADP (08.04.2001)/ HRWF International Secretariat (27.04.2001) http://www.hrwf.net - Email: info@hrwf.net - The Polish government is reorganizing its campaign against new religious movements after complaints of harassment from minority churches. Krzystof Wiktor, the head of Polanads Inter-Ministerial Team for New Religions Movements, after announcing plans to liquidate the existing team in favour of a new Inter- Ministerial Team for Psycho-Manipulative Groups said, State policy is undergoing important qualitative changes, which will enable us to avoid charges of violating religious freedom.
The reform was dismissed, however, as a pretence by a leader of the Polish Union of the Seventhday Adventist Church, who accused officials of helping suppress competition to the predominant Catholic Church. Wiktor said that new religious movements had been viewed as the key problem when his team was formed in 1997, but added that team members were no longer concerned with groups merely offering an alternative religiousness. He said, An inter-ministerial team will still be needed, since the sect-phenomenon is too broad and multifaceted to be treated like other social pathologies. But we are not interested in the cult activities of this or that church.
Polands Inter-Ministerial Team denied in a June 2000 report that religious sects posed a big threat to society, but called on state institutions to begin training personnel in how to deal with them.
A Polish police spokesman, Pawel Biedziak, denied in November 2000 that law enforcers were acting under pressure from Catholic leaders, but confirmed that material from Catholic anti-sect groups had been used for instructing groups of officers from each Polish country.
Meanwhile, the secretary general of the Seventh Day Adventist Church in Poland, Andrzej Sicinski, testified that Catholic information centers had also given "sect training sessions" to school directors and teachers. Sicinski said dissolution of the existing Inter-Ministerial Team had been expected; adding that he doubted the new team would survive the expected collapse of Poland's center-right government after autumn 2001 elections. "The new name and formula are claerly intended to enable Mr. Wiktor and his team to remain in power a bit longer," said Sicinski, whose church is one of the 15 recognized in Poland under their own special legislation. "But I think this is a pretense.
The new team will work, like its predecessor, to suppress competition to Catholic Church, using criteria which enable the sect label to be thrown at all non-Roman Catholics. Registered Christian minorities in Poland have frequently cited pressure from the Catholic Church, which nominally comprises at least 95 percent of the countrys 39 million citizens. Today more than 12,000 Adventist Christians, including 5,638 adult baptized church members, worship in over 120 congregations in Poland.
Last year the Council of Ecumenism of the Conference of Bishops of the Roman-Catholic Church in Poland and the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Poland published a joint statement, which declares that the The Seventh-day Adventist Church cannot be treated either as a new religious movement or as a sect. The statement recognizes: The Adventist Church that belongs to the Church of Christ has got in Poland legal regulation of its status, brings the positive religious and moral values into the life of our society and with respect relates to the Catholic Church as well as the other Christian Churches, religious and social communities in accordance with the spirit of the Gospel, human rights and principles of religious liberty and beliefs.
|
