Police Assaults on Spiritual Minorities

The Facts

For some twenty years, amid general ignorance or indifference, individuals, families and associations have been subjected to assaults of great brutality by the national police or the gendarmerie on the basis of the mere accusation of being a “cult”.

Violent searches are carried out early in the morning, in front of traumatised children, and numerous irregularities come to light every time (see the cases below).

The psychological consequences of this kind of barbaric assault are one of the most painful aspects of these interventions.

It appears that these shows of force are essentially aimed at creating intimidation within spiritual minorities. The effect is guaranteed, and few have the courage to complain; they choose to let time dress their wounds.

A few cases

Longo Maï, Limans hill (Alpes de Haute-Provence)

29 November 1989, assault on the Longo Maï agricultural community. At seven in the morning, 200 CRS riot police, mobile guards, judicial police inspectors, DST officers and local gendarmes are deployed; trucks block the access roads and two helicopters fly over the site. Everyone is pushed outside, in pyjamas or half naked in the cold, children and adults alike. The adults are made to kneel, hands on their heads, in front of their children, at gunpoint. The radio equipment is smashed, every building is searched. It would later emerge that the government had acted at the request of the German government, which suspected Longo Maï of serving as a rear base for Kurdish militants. Yet another assault for nothing…

The Horus community (Drôme)

September 1991, this agrarian community saw the gendarmes and the media descend on their property. The report produced from that day is a manipulation of the facts, as is often the case. A lawyer invited to the site served as mediator so that the assault would not turn into a tragedy. Read more…

The community of The Family, formerly the “Children of God” (throughout France)

On 9 June 1993, in several of The Family’s 30 communities in France, 200 gendarmes arrested 43 adult members and 143 minors aged from 3 months (sic) to 16 years. Adults were handcuffed, thrown down stairs and dragged across gravel. Six years later, the accused were acquitted. (The members of The Family were used to police raids, their communities having suffered several in the early 1990s in several countries, with the same results.) It should be noted that these heavy-handed assaults on these communities took place in France at the very moment when the catastrophic action of the forces of order at Waco in the United States was being widely reported around the world. Read more…

Professor Beljanski (Isère)

On 9 October 1996, this 74-year-old doctor saw more than 200 hooded gendarmes appear at his home, some armed with bazookas, including members of the GIGN (to arrest 3 people!), who took him away handcuffed by TGV to Pau. The assault is described by witnesses as extremely violent. Deeply shocked, he was to die two years later, and was cleared of the accusations against him only posthumously. France was in fact condemned by the European Court of Human Rights for exceeding the “reasonable time” of the investigation and violating the European Convention on Human Rights, given Mirko Beljanski’s age and the damage done to his reputation as a scientist and to the seriousness of his research. Read more…

Tabitha’s Place (“Apostolic Order” or “The Twelve Tribes”) (Pyrénées-Atlantiques)

On 7 April 1997, following the death of a child, nearly 50 gendarmes, 12 doctors and the public prosecutor of Pau moved into the community’s farm in order to “check the state of health of the children” (during an assault, bungalows belonging to the community were destroyed by bulldozer). They found no trace of mistreatment, and there were therefore no judicial proceedings as a result of this assault. In 1996, 30 gendarmes had already carried out a visit to the same community without finding anything abnormal. The parents of the deceased child were nevertheless convicted in 2001 for “deprivation of food and care resulting in death” (the child had a congenital heart malformation which the parents had not had operated on). See their testimony

Ogyen Kunzang Choling (OKC) (Alpes de Haute-Provence)

30 May 1997, 150 gendarmes, supported by two helicopters (“to avoid any unpleasant surprise”, according to the gendarmerie commander), took over by surprise, and for 6 hours, the place of residence of a community close to Tibetan Buddhism, the “Château de Soleils” property (the same deployment of forces took place in Belgium, at the same moment, against the same community). Bones quickly drew attention, but “fortunately, a doctor called to the scene was able to confirm that they were not human bones” (!). Thirty children were interviewed, but no one was taken away by the gendarmes. A trial in 1996 (after several months in prison for some of them) had ended in the acquittal of several members of the community.

Domaine de Faujas, Doctor Tal Schaller (Drôme)

10 October 1997, three battalions of heavily armed gendarmes entered the property of Doctor Christian Tal Schaller, whom the authorities had linked to the Solar Temple affair because his publishing house was called “Vivez Soleil”! Military vehicles pushed into the four corners of the property to prevent possible escapes by members of “the cult”. After multiple interrogations over 6 hours, nothing could be found showing any cult activity on their part. Read more…

Steiner schools (throughout France)

14 December 1999, sixty education-authority inspectors from the Ministry of National Education descended on all the Steiner schools in France. This action, described by some pupils’ parents as a raid (at the same hour throughout France: inspection, searches, seizures), was very badly experienced. Read more…

The Terranova community (Aveyron)

On 20 November 2000 at 6 a.m., a small spiritual community in the Aveyron had to endure the brutal assault of some sixty heavily armed gendarmes. Psychological after-effects were still present in the children and adults six years later. The long list of accusations proved unfounded, and the final convictions, derisory, seem to be there only to justify such a deployment of force. Read more…

The Mandarom community (Alpes de Haute-Provence)

On 5 September 2001, the Mandarom statue was dynamited by the forces of order, who arrived heavily armed on the community’s property to evacuate “the faithful”. The community demonstrated that the accusation made against it of lacking a building permit for this statue was untrue. Read more…

Château de la Balme (Haute-Garonne)

On 17 January 2007, 40 heavily armed gendarmes (submachine guns, bulletproof vests, and bursting into the children’s bedrooms in this warlike gear, according to one resident) took over the Château de la Balme in the Toulouse suburbs. A psychologist, Claude David, had been in the sights of local anti-cultism for 15 years. Read more…

Domaine de Chardenoux (Saône-et-Loire)

On 7 January 2010, some twenty people and gendarmes in fatigues burst in early in the morning at the Domaine de Chardenoux, securing the entrances to the property guns in hand. All the equipment was taken away. No justification would be given to the members of the association, who had to endure a whole day of tendentious interrogations (about vegetarianism, compulsory gymnastics, or the wearing of a uniform (?)). Read more…

Biodynamics centre in Nyons (Drôme)

On 22 February 2011, 70 gendarmes, with the participation of the Cell for assistance and intervention in matters of dérives sectaires, invaded a “Centre for the teaching of biodynamics” and placed several people in police custody on the basis of rumours.

The attitude of victims of assaults or heavy-handed searches

CICNS has been able to note, through the testimonies it has gathered, that members of spiritual minorities experience genuine trauma in these brutal situations. The disproportion between the resources used by the forces of order and the everyday reality of the victims of these assaults produces shocks with persistent after-effects. Police and gendarmerie services are prepared to encounter terrorists and criminals, whereas they have before them harmless and peaceful people. This mismatch, a direct consequence of disinformation and the witch hunt, is the source of many dramatic excesses.

However, it is useful to point out that police and gendarmerie officers, and by extension most of the officials involved in such situations, do not really have a personal opinion on the question of “cults” and are “simply doing their job”, even if they are often victims of the collective psychosis.

It is therefore desirable to receive their visits by recognising that they “are not to blame” and to engage in a calm dialogue with them. In some testimonies, human contact with these people revealed that such a welcome made it possible to defuse the event, whereas reactions of panic, shouting and anger had no effect other than to increase hostilities.

CICNS invites members of spiritual minorities to receive these situations, should they arise, as opportunities to affirm without fear and without excessive reaction the value of their life choices. Generally speaking, the “victim” attitude and the tendency to lose one’s composure in revolting situations never produce anything but an aggravation of the conflict.

Read the letters sent to gendarmerie groups about the excesses committed during deployments of force against spiritual minorities.

Read Searches and police custody: what you need to know

Storming Zion: Palmer and Wright’s investigation into police raids on minorities