I’ve come across rather dodgy efforts disguised under genuine educational materials getting into schools before… but this is a new one to me, which I think should be better known to people. ABC News reports:
The New South Wales Government says the Church of Scientology is targeting Year 6 students using “marketing” material that claims to promote human rights.
Education Minister Verity Firth has ordered principals not to distribute DVDs and booklets funded by the church and sent to schools by a group called Youth For Human Rights. The material outlines the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights and quotes Scientology founder L Ron Hubbard on a list of “famous human rights leaders”.
Ms Firth only learned of the material when she was contacted by a Sydney journalist on Friday, three days after federal independent Senator Nick Xenophon accused the group of widespread criminal conduct and abuse.
From their official Australian site:
‘…in March 2002 Youth Human Rights International (YHRI) released the English-language edition of What Are Human Rights? This booklet contains a simplified version of the Declaration written especially for children…. [for] teachers, government officials, community and religious leaders, not to mention the children themselves, What Are Human Rights? has already been translated into 21 languages.
You really have to look around hard on their site before you find this:
A generous grant by the International Association of Scientologists (IAS) has enabled us to produce and distribute with no cost, the Youth for Human Rights educational DVDs and materials, which teach youth the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
What else have they done? Quite a bit. One aspect reported on Wikipedia:
The organization’s work is supported by the actor and Scientologist Tom Cruise[36] and cooperates with human rights organizations, such as local chapters of Amnesty International.[37] According to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, neither Amnesty International in Berlin nor Amnesty International headquarters in London had knowledge of any such collaboration.[38]
Further reading - “Investigative commission on the influence of sects and the consequences of their practices on the mental and physical health of children” (PDF). It is in French, but here is a very basic translation of a summary page of a session held in 2006 on “Creation of a commission of inquiry into the influence of cults on minors“:
“ Ron Hubbard, founder of Scientology, calls to replace breastfeeding, which would be detrimental for bottles made with barley water, pasteurized milk and sugar syrup. Imagine the damage that can cause this kind of nonsense. Obviously the child, malleable, impressionable, is the focus of sectarian leaders. “I will make you happy slaves,” said the same Ron Hubbard.
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That’s not just subversive, that’s a bad joke. Scientology *promoting* human rights?! (I don’t mean that ‘Scientologists are bad people’, but the organisation has a poor reputation.)
Bestowing the title of A Human Rights Leader on L. Ron Hubbard is like suggesting that a shepherd, penning a flock of sheep, is liberating his flock; corralling them into a group, away from others.
… and then fleecing them.
(Is it just me, or does this whole ’shepherd’ metaphor ring a bell?)
Congratulations to the Sydney journalist who spotted this.
As for LRH’s thoughts on the ills of breastfeeding, well, nursing was good enough for nature, and it’s worked for millennia, for not just the species ‘homo sapien’.
Frankly, the more I learn about this organization, the more I come to perceive it as a threat to any country where it has gained a foothold. It’s time governments took some responsibility and put this pernicious cult under deep scrutiny with a view to putting it out of business.
That sounds like it should’ve come from the Onion. If it’s real, satirists are in trouble.
Of course the big elephant in the room is the school chaplaincy program that’s just been extended.
OH YES, heh! I have already ‘tweeted’ to KRudd on Twitter, ‘got any evidence for how it’s being used / long term efficacy / application across institutions beyond the ONE example you praise?’
Very sad. It’s taken years and years and only now is Australia speaking out? How many had to fight behind the scenes before Xenophon said something — this is a great move and I hope it has impetus.
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