FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 19-SEP-2005
Sunday evening, in a somber ceremony at Santa Barbara Harbor, the National Coalition of Human Rights Activists presented the Scientology corporation with the first annual NCHRA Human Rights Counter-Achievement Award. The Scientology corporation won the award after NCHRA membership last August examined ten private United States businesses and organizations that have the worse reputation for human rights abuses, and voted on fifteen criteria regarding the worse offender for each criterion. NCHRA media liaison for California, Dr. Jessica Wells, presented the award in front of NCHRA-California members.
"We present this shameful but well-earned award to the Scientology business with much regret and sorrow," Dr. Jessica Wells told the audience, "as it represents thousands of Scientology customers and staff who have been consistently and perniciously denied their human rights by the Scientology corporation." The votes were based upon hundreds of court documents, declarations, affidavits, and transcripts sworn to under oath by Scientology customers victimized by the business.
"The Scientology corporation must cease its human rights abuses against Scientologists," Dr. Wells said, "and also cease its abuses against the larger community. We do not want to have to present the Human Rights Counter-Achievement Award to the same business again next year."
In Greece and Germany the Scientology corporation is officially considered a threat to the citizenry and a danger to democracy. Several other countries monitor the sinister organization as they do other crime syndicates.
The president of the NCHRA was unable to attend the ceremony, but he sent a video tape which was played for the NCHRA membership. In the tape, Mr. Rice outlined some of the many human rights abuses Scientologists are subjected to and demanded that the Scientology corporation cease abusing their customers and staff.
"The Scientology business's criminal and abominable 'Rehabilitation Project Force' must be dismantled," Mr. Rice said from the video monitor. "It exists only to punish Scientology staff members who no longer wish to work for the business and who no longer wish to purchase any Scientology. Locking up people and denying them sleep and food is barbaric and criminal--- and in the RPF this behavior is commonplace and per Scientology policy."
Other human rights abuses committed against Scientologists were also denounced by Mr. Rice in his taped speech. Included were demands to end those abuses, such as:
1) Women Scientologist must be allowed to keep their pregnancies and have children if they wish to; mandatory abortions must cease.
2) Children of Scientology staff must be allowed to live with their parents.
3) The policy of demanding the abandonment of children and spouse if those children and spouses object to the crimes and human rights abuses committed against Scientology customers and staff (call "disconnection" by the business) must cease.
4) Scientology customers must be told exactly what they are purchasing before they hand over the hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on buying god-like powers and abilities that they never achieve.
5) Scientology customers and staff must be allowed to receive medical health care when they need it.
6) The Scientology business must cease locking up their customers and staff against their will.
7) Scientologists working as staff must be paid at least minimum wage. The practice of paying them $48 a week for over 100 hours of labor must cease.
8) The Lisa Clause, and all similar waivers and disclaimers that customers and staff members are forced to sign and agree to must be revoked. One cannot sign away one's human rights.
9) The Scientology business must cease teaching that black people are inferior to white people.
10) The Scientology business must cease teaching that homosexuality is a disease which Scientology "technology" can cure.
11) The Scientology business must cease using the legal system to punish the business's victims when those victims seek legal redress.
12) The Scientology business must cease practicing medicine without a license. This includes shutting down all of Scientology's NarConon facilities world-wide.
13) Customers and staff who no longer wish to purchase any Scientology must be allowed to quit doing so, and to be free from harassment and abuse after they have quit.
"These items, and many more, must all be achieved by the Scientology corporation before the business will achieve a healthy human rights record," Mr. Rice said. "The time for the Scientology business to cease abusing the human rights of Scientologists is long over-due."
Dr. Wells concluded the presentation by speaking the names of nearly 100 Scientologists who have committed suicide or who had died under tragic or mysterious circumstances.
The ten businesses and organizations that the NCHRA membership examined and voted upon included the Mafia, four White Supremacist groups, one Black Supremacist group, three churches, and the Scientology corporation. United States Governmental agencies were not examined, though the NCHRA recognizes the systemic human rights abuses within the USA government.
The criteria voted upon included the right to life; the right to liberty; the right to security; the right to freedom from servitude; the right to redress of grievances; the right to property; the right of freedom of movement; the right to free expression of opinions; the right of religious faith; the right to religion expression; the right to be free from coercion and compulsion; the right of safe working conditions; the right to unionize; the recognition of child protections; and the right to sunder personal associations.
The next NCHRA Human Rights Counter-Achievement Award will be voted upon August 10th. 2006.
