GERMANS AND AMERICANS AGAINST DISCRIMINATION

(G.A.A.D.)
545 Eighth Avenue, Suite 401
New York, NY 10018
Phone (212)560-2689

HAMBURG STATE GOVERNMENT FUNDING DISCRIMINATORY PRACTICES

The writer, an established businessman in Berlin who chooses to remain anonymous, has reported that he was required to sign a "Scientology disclaimer" form before a large real estate company in Berlin would agree to do business with him.

These "disclaimer" forms, according to reliable sources, are provided by Ms. Ursula Caberta, who heads the anti-Scientology working group based in Hamburg under the Hamburg Ministry of Interior.

It also appears that the Berlin Chamber of Commerce has published information on these forms in one of their periodicals.

In fact, Ms. Caberta has gone so far as to promote these forms in a speech to businessmen in Bremen as a "solution" to the "infiltration" of businesses by members of the Church of Scientology. One wonders whether Caberta will be issuing similar disclaimer forms for members of the Jewish faith or Catholics to prevent the takeover of Germany businesses by members of these religions.

These discriminatory practices by German officials must cease. If you are aware of similar practices going on, please send us your story. We are in the process of collecting all of the facts on this subject.

Below is a reprint of a previous article on this issue...

IS HISTORY REPEATING ITSELF?

Imagine this:

You are a productive citizen who runs a small business which you created using your own hard work and initiative. One day you arrive to work to find out that the Minister of Labor in the country in which you live has has just decreed that your business will no longer be allowed to be licensed by the state due to your religion. He later declares that members of the religion should be banned from occupations which intersect with society. The reasoning is based on false and unsupported charges and is part of a campaign to ban your religion.

This decree is accompanied by a nation wide smear campaign in the press in which members of your religion are depicted as demons and ogres. Suddenly, people you once knew will no longer speak to you and are told by government officials not to do business with you. The business which you worked hard to build collapses.

As such a discriminatory decree is against the country's constitution, you decide to file suit with the little money you have left only to be faced with a prejudiced panel of judges who have been subjected to "enlightenment" briefings as part of government sponsored campaign against your religion.

You are recognized on the street as a member of this religion and are physically threatened and subjected to verbal abuse. Your property is defaced with hate filled graffiti.

Still being a loyal citizen, you attempt to join a political party so as to have a voice against the ruling governmnent's oppression only to find that all the political parties have banned members of your religion from participation.

If this sounds like a Jew in pre-war Germany, you are only partially correct; this is exactly what is going on in Germany today but the members of the minority are not Jews but Scientologists.

Article 3.3: "No one may be discriminated against because of his sex, his heritage, his race, his language, his birthplace, his beliefs, his religious or political ideologies."

Article 4:1: "The freedom of faith, of conscience, and the freedom of religious and ideological beliefs are inviolable."

Article 4:2: "The undisturbed practice of religion is guaranteed."

______________________

• routinely advocates the blacklisting of artists and encourages economic boycotts of businessmen based on their religion.
• advocates an official policy which forces government employees to sign statements that they are not members of a certain minority religion?
• criticized a foreign government for not shutting down a school set up for children were ostracized from Germany due to their religion and their parents forced to set up a private school outside the border of Germany?
• initiated a three year criminal investigation against a religious group which was dropped with no charges being brought and then decided that new laws were needed which made the religious practices of this group illegal, in order to then find them guilty of a crime?

Caberta's Working Group on Scientology, was established in 1991 by a motion from Caberta herself who, at that time was a member of the Hamburg Senate. Caberta then got herself appointed to the job at several times the pay. The Hamburg taxpayers contribute one million deutschemarks annually to fund Caberta's office which is directly used to further a hate campaign against the Scientologists. Incidents created by this campaign of hate and prejudice abound. Just a few examples follow:

• In March 1992, the city government in Hamburg notified the Church of Scientology that it would refuse to rent out any public halls to the Church.
• Caberta used her position as a city official to promote that banks, businesses and chambers of commerce "protect" themselves against Scientologists by introducing forms to be signed by business partners declaring they do not endorse the teachings of L.Ron Hubbard, founder of the Scientology religion, but explicitly reject them.
• In early 1992, a computer firm owned by a member of the Church of Scientology was infiltrated, computer discs were stolen and turned over to Caberta, and the plant then filed a penal complaint against the company.
• In 1993 a book was published entitled, "The Merchant of Hamburg," which laid bare the groundless attempts by the Hamburg government to generate an atmosphere of hate against Scientologists and then strip them of all civil rights. In an effort to retaliate, a criminal complaint was filed against Church members. Soon after the book appeared, German police launched a raid on the printing plant, seized all copies of the book and impounded its printing plate so the book could not be reprinted. When the criminal court reviewed the case, it saw nothing wrong and subsequently dismissed the case.
• In May 1993, the City of Hamburg published an anti-Scientology propaganda pamphlet called, "Scientology, Labyrinth of Illusions," which contained uniformly inaccurate and derogatory information attacking Scientology and its adherents. The pamphlet was financed and distributed by as an official government publication across the country.
• Since 1993, world famous jazz musician Chick Corea has been banned from performing in Germany at state-sponsored events because of his religious affiliation with the Church of Scientology.
• In October 1995, Baden-Wurttemberg established a "Sect Advisory Council" in the Ministry of Culture to intensify the "enlightenment" campaign so as to further the goal of Caberta and her followers to ban Scientology. The same month the Young Union staged a demonstration for the press against Scientology.
• In July 1996, the Young Union in the state of Niedersachsen called for a boycott all over Germany for the movie "Mission Impossible," due to the religious affiliation of the star of the film, Tom Cruise, with the Church of Scientology.
• Examples of individual Scientologists who have been victimized by this so-called "enlightenment campaign" are numerous. One couple found themselves the victims of a smear campaign in the media; companies with whom they had done business for years suddenly refused to speak to them; their grandchildren were no longer admitted to kindergarten and the husband, founder of a management consultancy firm, was dismissed from the board of his local Rotary Club.
• Another couple received anonymous threats and found messages painted on their sidewalks and hung on bedsheets hung near their home, attacking them for their religious beliefs.
• German businessmen who are Scientologists have faced a vicious campaign including vandalizing of their business and economic boycotting. Caberta has publicly urged and dictated a "litmus" test to exclude and ostracize Scientologists from society. It has now become commonplace in Germany for individuals to be required to declare that they are not Scientologists in order to become members in political parties, professions, to open a business or bank account or receive a bank loan.
• One of the spokespersons used by Caberta early in her campaign was Renate Hartwig, who formerly ran a singles club and defrauded an estimated 750,000 deutschemarks from clients; and whose allegations against Scientology were found by police in Tubingen, Germany to be a "pack of lies."
• These disturbing similarities between Caberta's demagogic efforts and the infamous propaganda campaign of the Nazis does not end there.
• Caberta is also closely associated with one Robert Vaughn Young, an American who has travelled to Germany on many occasions to assist Caberta. Young was photographed in 1994 in a secret meeting with notorious neo-NAZI Willis Carto, founder of the Institute of Historical Review which claims that the Holocaust never happend and whose anti-semitic views have given him a reputation of being, in the words of Jewish author Yaron Svoray, "the most notorious Nazi in the world."
• When this connection became public, Caberta quickly sought to distance herself from Carto, requesting that Young send her a written statement that she could show to the authorities disassociating him from Carto.
• Despite Caberta's close ties to such right-wing extremists and anti-semitic fanatics, she was recently nominated and approved by the Government of the Federal Republic of Germany for a Federal Inquiry Commission on new religious movements and so-called "youth sects." Here she finds herself in the company of a long list of anti-religionists.
• The Inquiry Commission, which not only concerns itself with Scientology, but has also made the persecution of such religious minorities as the Jehovah's Witnesses, the Baptists, and the Mormons its business, makes no pretense about its objectives. The Inquiry Commission has the unworthy objective of curtailing the religious freedom of the above-mentioned new religions in Germany. The list of experts and MPs on the Commission reads like a German "Who's Who" of enemies to religious tolerance, spiritual development and individual freedom.

Interestingly enough, Hamburg's official minority hunter, Caberta, also advocates Stasi-like surveillance methods and coercive tactics in furtherance of this objective to get new religious movements banned. She has repeatedly stressed the importance of the involvement of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution in her battle against Scientology and other religious minorities.

The use of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution to suppress religious minorities has an unpleasant overtone, especially in Germany, a country still scarred by religious intolerance and genocide unlike any in history, where state security agencies abused their powers to eliminate dissidents.

Is it possible that Caberta knows exactly where her abuse of power is leading? Should her actions be viewed as simply the greed of a rising politician, or are these right-wing connections of Caberta's just a glimpse of what is rapidly becoming a re-enactment of the Third Reich in Germany?

Germans and Americans Against Discrimination (G.A.A.D.) is a grass-roots movement formed up in October 1993 by German and American citizens who are committed to exposing fascism, right-wing extremists, discrimination and injustice of any kind.