A Catastrophic Meeting for M. Fenech's Anti-Cult Theses

A Catastrophic Meeting for M. Fenech’s Primary Anti-Cult Theses… Which He Nevertheless Does Not Hesitate to Present as a Success

By CICNS (July 2012)

On 6 April 2011, Georges Fenech received Mgr Konstantin Bendas, vice-president of the Russian union of evangelical Christians, to present to him the “French model” of the fight against the “cults”.

M. Fenech sums up this meeting thus (source):

“The interview, which took place in very cordial conditions, made it possible to clarify the Russian and French approaches to the question. Mgr Bendas expressed the wish to invite the president of the Miviludes to Russia, notably to explain to the Duma the organisation, missions and functioning of the Miviludes, as well as the French legislative apparatus in the matter. M. Fenech replied that he would willingly accept an invitation to go to Moscow.”

Without suspecting that Mgr Bendas would not fail to publish his scathing opinion, at the opposite pole from his falsified presentation (source):

“The anti-cultists create the myth they want to fight with the State’s money”

Source: ROSKHVE press service

June 2012 (CICNS translation)

“Paris Tribune” announced on 8 June 2012 that George Fenech, president of the MIVILUDES (Interministerial Mission for the Fight against Dérives Sectaires), was convicted by the Paris criminal court on 1 June 2012 for defamation. The affair began with defamatory accusations published in the MIVILUDES report of 2009 concerning a lay organisation: the French society for the defence of tradition, family and property.

The 17th Chamber of the Paris criminal court, specialised in cases linked to the media and the press, ruled on the slanderous character of the accusatory statements contained in the report presented to the Prime Minister. The Public Prosecutor’s office noted above all the lack of precision in this report as well as the indelicacy of the expressions used. The Prosecutor’s office put the accent on the fact that a State agency like the MIVILUDES should not use vague and confused formulations and hypotheses in its work.

During his official visit to France in 2011, the vice-president of the Russian Union of Evangelical Christians, Bishop Konstantin Bendas, met George Fenech and shared his impressions:

“The meeting with the president of the MIVILUDES left me with more than ambiguous feelings. Besides myself and M. Fenech, his first deputy, the representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who had organised my visit, as well as the translator placed at our disposal were present at this meeting. I must specify that my whole trip to France was devoted to an exchange of experience in the domain of interconfessional relations and relations between the State and religion. In France, as in Russia, various forces try more and more often to use religion in order to provoke feelings of hostility, to create tension in society and, in certain cases, to justify crimes. In various places on our planet, wars and conflicts are set up, provoked or justified on the basis of religion.

I was first of all stunned by the level of paranoia and protection of M. Fenech’s office. The MIVILUDES building displayed no indicative plaque but was fitted with an impressive number of surveillance cameras. We were welcomed by gendarmerie officers equipped with bulletproof vests and automatic weapons. Everywhere inside the building surveillance cameras were installed, including in the small lift, and a gendarme escorted us to the president’s office. M. Fenech’s office is furnished in a very costly fashion, even in comparison with the offices of the other senior officials I met, for example the Minister of National Education, the head of one of the departments of the Ministry of Defence, or the Minister of the Interior. Nowhere did I see such costly and luxurious furniture and decorations. None of the officials of the French State whom I met allows himself to wear such expensive suits and gold watches.

I sincerely tried to understand this menace against which it was necessary to put in place such means of protection and to invest such sums. Alas, during our conversation of an hour and a half, I obtained no clear answer. Fabricated formulas without constitutional foundation such as ‘cult menace’ or ‘dérives sectaires’ were used. To my direct question as to what that really means, I received no answer. According to M. Fenech’s words, it would be something ‘which goes beyond the limits of the existing’. But the criteria of this ‘existing’ remained vague. For example, I asked whether the teaching and practice of the Roman Catholic Church could be taken as a criterion, and whether departures from that criterion could be considered cult-like. ‘No,’ he answered me, ‘even in the Catholic Church there are many dérives sectaires.’ Moreover, according to the president of the MIVILUDES, the fight against the cults does not exclusively concern the religious domain. Dérives sectaires can be found everywhere: in politics, the economy, social questions. According to M. Fenech’s words, the cult menace is the attempt to influence in various ways a human being who finds himself in a state of ‘weakness’. Counting on his fingers, the French cult-fighter enumerated the following situations: a person who has recently lost family members, a person who is ill, disabled, recently divorced, who has lived through family difficulties or conflicts, as well as children, adolescents, schoolchildren, students, pregnant women, agents of the military forces, prisoners, employees… All that was missing was ‘those who got up on the wrong side of the bed’! The whole population of our planet falls into the category of human beings liable to be manipulated by a cult. It is therefore against the influence of one human being on another human being that the MIVILUDES attempts to protect us. As we see, it is a very vast field of activity, whose criteria are fixed only by this organisation, the MIVILUDES.

In my opinion, these people have invented a horrible menace, and to be able to fight against it they receive very large sums of money. With the State’s money, that of the taxpayers, the MIVILUDES looks for a black cat in a dark room, where it is not even to be found. Fenech takes credit for his own influence on anti-cult structures and organisations in other countries, including in Russia.

When this meeting came to an end and we went out into the street, I heard the sigh of relief of the translator accompanying me. I asked her for her impressions and this secular person, with no link to the religious domain, told me: ‘I have never belonged to a cult, but if they exist, then they must really resemble the MIVILUDES!’

What to conclude in summary? We should in no case invent new menaces and new methods of struggle going beyond the framework of existing legislation and fundamental rights. We must remain particularly prudent in today’s world. The organisations that build peace and international and interconfessional dialogue need genuine support from the State, for it is thanks to its effort that we shall be able to bring society together. However, against these fighters against mythical cult menaces, excuse me the tautology, one must really fight by applying the full rigour of the law.”