Court Decisions in Favour of Spiritual Minorities (2007)

Court decisions in favour of spiritual minorities (2007)

Three recent court decisions show that it is at last possible in France to obtain redress for defamation while being a member of a minority spiritual movement, without needing to go all the way to the European Court of Human Rights. This is good news in the current noxious climate, a timid but encouraging step towards a rebalancing of the debate on the place of spiritual minorities in our society. The time of scapegoats should be over.

Saturday 21 July 2007 - ROUEN, 20 July 2007 (AFP) - 15:45

Mrs Picard (UNADFI) convicted of defamation against the Jehovah’s Witnesses The Rouen Court of Appeal on Wednesday ordered the president of the National Union of Associations for the Defence of Families and the Individual (Unadfi), Catherine Picard, to pay 6,750 euros to the Jehovah’s Witnesses for defamation, it was learned Friday from a judicial source. The court thereby overturned a judgment of the Evreux court, which on 26 October last had acquitted Catherine Picard. The sum awarded in compensation for “moral injury” will be divided among eight associations attached to the Jehovah’s Witnesses whose headquarters are in Louviers (Eure). The Jehovah’s Witnesses had summoned Catherine Picard (who is also a PS regional councillor for Haute-Normandie) before the courts over an interview given in October 2005 to the Dépêche d’Evreux in which she accused them of “being structured in a pyramid fashion like all mafia movements”. According to the court’s ruling as cited by the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the court held that Catherine Picard had “in an outrageous manner and through a tendentious presentation cast discredit on the Jehovah’s Witnesses and (…) made excessive statements exceeding the admissible limits of free opinion and exclusive of any good faith”. The court further recalled that the Jehovah’s Witnesses enjoyed the “status of a religious association” (association cultuelle), which was known to Catherine Picard, “a person perfectly informed about the movement’s operation”. (Source: http://filinfo.france3.fr/popup_afp.php?nameRegion=normandie&id=070720134538.ob73ofue)

The remarks of Anne Fournier and Catherine Picard against AMORC ruled defamatory by the Court of Cassation Court of Cassation

Civil Chamber 1

Public hearing of 3 April 2007

Appeal No. 06-15226

Published in the bulletin

President: Mr ANCEL

(Extracts) Whereas in a work published in September 2002 by Presses universitaires de France under the title “Sectes, démocratie et mondialisation” [“Cults, democracy and globalisation”], written by Mrs X… (editor’s note: Anne Fournier), project officer at the Interministerial Mission to Combat Cults (MILS), and Mrs Y… (editor’s note: Catherine Picard), then deputy for the Eure, the association Ancient and Mystical Order Rosae Crucis (AMORC), which presents itself as a philosophical, initiatory and traditional movement, non-cult and non-religious, apolitical and open to men and women without distinction of race, religion or social position, was cited several times in the work alongside other cult enterprises whose action was denounced; that it was imputed to it that it was a mafia-like structure with a mode of operation comparable to that of serious organised crime; that it formed part, with other movements, of an occult organisation whose objective was said to be not to support the future democracies in Africa but to develop personal interests and to support theories that are racist and injurious to liberties; and that it was allegedly insinuated that a grand master of the AMORC association had played an important role in the affair of the Order of the Solar Temple (OTS) and had been spared by the judicial investigation only because of the “form of protection” the association allegedly enjoyed owing to its solid links with the African networks of the great French presidents; that, considering such remarks defamatory, the AMORC association sued the authors and the publisher of the book for damages; Whereas, in dismissing that claim, the Court of Appeal stated, concerning the aforementioned passages of the work, that, being far removed from the other passages complained of, they cited the AMORC association no more than other cult movements but expressed generalities on the nature and functioning of cults, and that, this being an opinion of a general order, it was wrongly claimed that those passages were defamatory; Whereas in so ruling, when the remarks reported, likening cults to “totalitarian groups”, to “Nazism” or to “Stalinism”, imputing to them the “extortion” of the adherence of their members, over whom they exercise means of pressure such as to make them lose all free will, likening them to “zones of lawlessness” and comparing them to “the mafia”, being susceptible of proof and of adversarial debate, are defamatory with regard to all the movements described as cults and consequently with regard to the AMORC association, since it results from the impugned work that it is one, the Court of Appeal violated the aforementioned texts; And on the second and third limbs of the single ground of appeal: Having regard to Articles 29 and 32 of the law of 29 July 1881, together with Article 10 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms; Whereas, in holding that the presumption of bad faith attaching to defamation was rebutted, the Court of Appeal stated that the remarks relied on publications, a report and substantial documentation which the authors, describing themselves as specialists in the problem treated, adopted as their own, revealing an opaque functioning of the association and the elitist character of its theses, the existence for a time of links between a leader of the association and the Order of the Solar Temple, as well as on works and research reporting its influence in Africa; Whereas in so ruling the Court of Appeal did not characterise the prudence and moderation in expression, nor the reliability of the investigation, necessary for admitting the justifying defence of good faith, and thus violated the aforementioned texts; ON THESE GROUNDS: QUASHES AND ANNULS, in all its provisions, the ruling delivered on 22 March 2006, between the parties, by the Court of Appeal of Paris;

(Source: http://www.lexinter.net/JPTXT4/JP2005/diffamation_enquete_et_bonne_foi.htm)

Anne Hidalgo’s claim dismissed by the 17th Criminal Chamber July 2007 The 17th Criminal Chamber dismissed Anne Hidalgo’s claim following her complaint against Christian Cotten, president of Politique de Vie. The complaint followed the latter’s posting online of a leaflet signed by a “Support Committee for Anne Hidalgo”; she denied any link with the production of that leaflet. That leaflet in fact reproduced a map of new beliefs in Paris. As the Coordination des Associations et Particuliers pour la Liberté de Conscience had revealed, this map had indeed been drawn up at the request of the Paris City Hall and promoted by Anne Hidalgo herself: “We first carried out an inventory of cult movements in the capital, and I moreover thank APUR, which produced a map that we distributed in the arrondissements, to the arrondissement mayors, and which is very useful since it makes it possible to identify the best-known locations of the cult movements operating in Paris. But beyond this work, which we also carried out with the Interministerial Mission responsible for combating cult phenomena (MIVILUDES)…”. Minutes of the Council of Paris. Anne Hidalgo’s defence had argued that alluding to this map, as well as to a list of symptoms making it possible to identify members of the new beliefs (“Numerous telephone calls”, “abundant mail”, “meetings during the week or at the weekend”, “long reading time”, etc.) “ridiculed the action carried out by the city of Paris” (Source: http://www.coordiap.com/grill200607.htm)