Commentary on the 2005 Raffarin Circular on Dérives Sectaires

Commentary on the “Raffarin” Circular on the Fight against Dérives Sectaires

By Emile Dalbret of CICNS

The circular of 27 May 2005 on the fight against dérives sectaires issued by Jean-Pierre Raffarin was perceived by some in spiritual circles as a source of hope, a sign of the government’s goodwill towards restoring a certain equity in the treatment of new spiritualities.

Reading this circular, the full text of which you will find below, we wonder however how its announcement could have carried any enthusiasm.

This document is enough to convince one that the “policy of fighting against dérives sectaires” is being called into question only on a minor point of form, but in no way in its perspectives, its intentions and its intensity.

Comments in bold italics within the text

Official Journal no. 126 of 1 June 2005, page 9751

text no. 8

Decrees, orders, circulars

General texts

Prime Minister

Circular of 27 May 2005 on the fight against dérives sectaires

NOR: PRMX0508471C

Paris, 27 May 2005.

The Prime Minister to the Ministers and Secretaries of State, to the Prefects,

In creating, by the decree of 28 November 2002, the Interministerial Mission for Vigilance and Combat against Dérives Sectaires (MIVILUDES), the Government intended to reorganise the preventive and repressive action of the services of the State against these doings. After thirty months of operation of the MIVILUDES, and following the second annual report submitted to me by its president, I judge it useful to draw the lessons and to set out the orientations that follow.

I. - The principles of the action carried out by the Government

The action carried out by the Government is dictated by the concern to reconcile the fight against the doings of certain groups, which exploit the subjection, physical or psychological, in which their members find themselves placed, with respect for public liberties and for the principle of laïcité.

Expressed there is the whole paradox of a state which, while claiming to act for the safeguard of its citizens, finds itself regularly confronted with the limits imposed by the fundamental texts of its own constitution.

Experience has shown that an approach consisting, for the public authorities, in describing this or that group as a “cult” and in founding their action on that description alone would not make it possible to ensure this reconciliation effectively and to give the initiatives taken a solid basis in law. It has therefore been decided, rather than blacklisting certain groups, to exercise particular vigilance over any organisation which appears to exert a hold dangerous to the individual liberty of its members, so as to be ready to identify and to repress any doing liable to receive a criminal characterisation or, more generally, seeming contrary to the laws and regulations. This concern for legal certainty, far from weakening the action carried out, only better guarantees its effectiveness.

This is, we believe, an unprecedented admission that the French government engaged, within the framework of its policy of fighting against dérives sectaires, in an “experiment” of “blacklisting” by founding its action on the mere description as a cult. This admission, which seems to us extremely grave, is in no way accompanied by the fundamental reconsideration we could legitimately expect. We can read in this paragraph not only the determination to persevere in this policy, but also the intention of letting a vagueness reign in this action, maintained by terms we have highlighted and which leave the door open to every interpretation and every abuse. The reconsideration of form developed further on is moreover, it seems, motivated only by a “concern for legal certainty”.

It is clear, however, that such an approach can be fully effective only if civil servants and public agents carry out, with discernment, genuine action on the ground:

• they must strive to seek out and to identify, within their sphere of responsibilities, any activity, whatever its form, liable to take on a “cult-like” character, because it places the persons taking part in it in a situation of subjection or of hold and takes advantage of that dependence;

Thus, the groups will no longer be cults, but activities of a cult-like character. The definition given here could once again be attributed to every type of human activity. A supporters’ association, a political party, like a football club or a company, places its members or its employees in a situation of dependence from which they profit. Since indeed, as in spiritual circles, people often gather there through communion of interest, of conviction or of faith in order to make these grow.

• this activity must then be followed with extreme vigilance so as to prevent any reprehensible doing and, should it occur, to engage repressive action without delay. This vigilance must be exercised taking account of the evolution of the cult phenomenon, which makes the list of movements annexed to the 1995 parliamentary report less and less pertinent. One observes in fact the formation of small structures, diffuse, shifting and less easily identifiable, which take advantage in particular of the possibilities of dissemination offered by the Internet.

The State is therefore now attacking the “small ones” more particularly. It is true that certain large groups have turned out to have cumbersome supporters, notably at UNESCO, at the UN, or in certain great States.

This vigilance is particularly crucial with regard to certain groups founded on a totalitarian conception and practising an occult mode of operation, whose doings can have irreparable consequences.

This sentence is typical of an attitude aimed at maintaining the fear of an undefined and anonymous enemy, the sinew of a war which always finds new combatants.

II. - The modalities of the action

The action engaged must be pursued thanks to the apparatus, without equal in Europe, put in place at both national and local level.

1. The existence of an interministerial mission attached to the Prime Minister allows the coherence of the action of the State by coordinating the activity of the services.

The executive operational steering committee, which brings together the representatives of the central administrations most concerned, meets every two months.

I ask that this rhythm be maintained and that the representation of the services be ensured regularly and at the best level of responsibility.

The confident and fruitful dialogue which has been established under the responsibility of the president of the MIVILUDES between this committee and the orientation council, which brings together qualified figures, must be deepened.

The orientation council brings together, among others but in the majority, representatives or associates of UNADFI and of the CCMM, associations which display an “anti-cult” bias, deputies who regularly and publicly reiterate bellicose wishes against spiritual minorities and thus a consensus which does not seem to leave room for any questioning of the belief in a pernicious and grave danger in the new expressions of spirituality.

2. The same coherence has been sought at local level with the institution, by a circular of the Minister of the Interior, of “departmental vigilance cells” placed under the authority of the prefects.

The missions of these cells will be transferred by decree in the Conseil d’Etat, within the framework of the simplification of devolved commissions, to a new council with competence in the prevention of delinquency, the fight against drugs, against dérives sectaires and aid to victims.

The prefects will put in place within each council a working group charged with specifically following questions relating to the fight against dérives sectaires.

3. Certain ministries have designated specialised correspondents or project officers. I wish each minister to equip himself with such an official, at an adequate level (cabinet, directorate of legal affairs or strategic directorate) with recognised capacities for coordination and animation.

4. The regional correspondents of the MIVILUDES designated by the regional prefects have received a general mission of training and information. This mission must be consolidated and enlarged. I wish in particular that a synthesis document be drawn up at regional level making it possible to follow developments, and that an interservice training programme on dérives sectaires be organised, with the help notably of the “Guide for the public agent”.

5. The competent police and gendarmerie services, as well as the judicial authority, will build up collections of updated data, bearing notably on the number and nature of reports, complaints, investigations or convictions in connection with dérives sectaires.

6. Each ministerial department will draw up an annual review of its actions which may figure, in whole or in part, in the report of the president of the MIVILUDES. This review must bear on the activities pursued, the training actions undertaken and the results obtained at local as at national level. The case of children and adolescents must be the object of particular attention so as to ensure the protection due to them.

Decidedly, the matter is serious: it mobilises prefects, ministries and civil servants in a fight which is indeed unique in Europe and which leaves dumbfounded many European governments who see in the emergence of the new spiritual movements no cause whatever for concern or particular vigilance.

7. The answers to the written questions of parliamentarians bearing on the problems linked to the cult phenomenon - several dozen a year - must be the object of your full attention. Given the sensitivity of the subject, I ask you to seek the opinion of the MIVILUDES systematically before any answer.

Our observation of the written and oral questions of the National Assembly reveals that half of the interventions in question have as their author deputies who are members of the orientation council of the MIVILUDES, and that not one of them calls the government’s policy into question. Here again, then, it is a matter of support expressed for a more extremist policy.

8. Finally, a certain number of ministerial instructions given by your predecessors must be updated in line with the orientations defined by the present circular. I ask you to proceed with this examination in liaison with the MIVILUDES. In any event, the references to bodies such as the Observatory of Cults or the Interministerial Mission for the Fight against Cults (MILS) must be replaced by references to the decree instituting the MIVILUDES, and recourse to lists of groups will be avoided in favour of the use of bundles of criteria. I ask you to proceed with this updating by 31 December 2005 at the latest.

Jean-Pierre Raffarin

This last point, which seems to have aroused some hopes of openness, is, in the light of what precedes it, only a “marketing” clarification of an enterprise whose nature and substance remain unchanged.

It is more topical than ever to gather together to support the action of CICNS, and notably its project of the first serious survey on spiritual liberty in France, a survey which the government decidedly does not seem ready to contemplate.