Russia bans Scientology: Justice ministry places key Scientologist teams on record of ‘undesirable’ organizations

Russia’s Justice Ministry has blacklisted two Church of Scientology teams, banning them from working within the nation. Moscow has battled the self-avowed church for years, arguing it’s merely a enterprise masquerading as faith.

An up to date record of “undesirable” organizations was launched by the Justice Ministry on Friday, simply over per week after the Russian Prosecutor Basic’s workplace suggested a ban for a number of Church of Scientology teams.  

Two California-based teams, the World Institute of Scientology Enterprises Worldwide (WISE) and the Church of Religious Expertise (CST), often known as the “L. Ron Hubbard Library,” have been formally blacklisted on Friday. 

Each teams have been deemed a menace to Russia’s nationwide safety, in accordance with a earlier assertion from the prosecutor’s workplace. The inclusion of Scientology on Russia’s record of “undesirable” organizations, which presently quantity at 49, means the group is now prohibited from conducting any actions in Russia, with its native chapters to be forcibly closed and belongings frozen.

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The choice follows a decades-long struggle to ban Scientology from illegally profiting on Russian territory, with the primary main effort to limit the group relationship again to 1996, some twelve years after the group gained a foothold in what was then the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, it was not till the 2010s when authorities actually cracked down on Scientology teams, investigating main branches in Moscow and St. Petersburg, in addition to their leaders, on fees of unlawful enterprise actions and extremism. Among the group’s literature has been outlawed as extremist materials, whereas its Moscow chapter was ordered closed by the Supreme Courtroom in 2016.

The Church of Scientology, which was based by American science fiction novelist L. Ron Hubbard within the 1950s, describes itself as a brand new non secular motion, whereas its critics consider the group to be both a harmful cult, a enterprise attempting to dodge taxes utilizing non secular exemptions, or some mixture of each.

Whereas the group has not often achieved full-blown recognition from state authorities all over the world, it has managed to acquire a tax exemption standing in a lot of nations. On the similar time, Russia is much from being the one nation actively obstructing the group’s actions and affect. A drawn-out case in Belgian in opposition to the ‘church’ concerned fees of bribery, extortion, fraud, and the unlicensed apply of drugs, however its leaders have been acquitted of all fees. In the meantime in France, Scientology has been categorised as a harmful cult and 7 of its members have been convicted on varied fees, together with contribution to suicide. 

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Sarcastically, it was the Strasbourg, France-based European Courtroom of Human Rights (ECHR) that got here to the protection of Scientology in its case in Russia, accusing authorities of spiritual discrimination. In actual fact, the group seems so assured in regards to the ECHR’s help that an American consultant as soon as stated of the scenario in France, “if it has to go to the court docket of human rights we’re assured we are going to win there.”

The US has constantly lambasted any nation trying to take the group and its leaders to court docket as discriminating on non secular grounds, regardless of an extended historical past of lawsuits and different authorized points with the group inside the USA. Within the 1970s, the ‘church’ carried out what it dubbed ‘Operation Snow White,’ which reportedly noticed as much as 5,000 Scientologists infiltrate scores of US authorities companies – specifically the IRS – the place they stole paperwork, wiretapped telephones of presidency brokers and carried out different surveillance. A number of high-ranking Scientologists, amongst them Hubbard’s then-wife Mary Sue, pleaded responsible to fees linked to the large infiltration op, together with obstruction of justice, housebreaking of presidency workplaces, and theft of paperwork and authorities property.

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