Articles

By Willy Fautre

Published in The European Times

On 20 and 26 December 2024, the City Court of Tbilisi held hearings to decide whether Georgia should extradite Mihai Stoian and his wife Adina arrested in August 2024 on the Turkish-Georgian border on the basis of an Interpol arrest warrant issued on France’s request.

A few days after mid-December, I happened to be in Tbilisi for The European Times to cover the unstable political situation and the demonstrations in the country following the contested results of the parliamentary elections and the subsequent election of a new contested pro-Kremlin president by the new parliament. On this occasion, I published two articles titled “GEORGIA: Election of an ex-footballer as the new president booed by demonstrators” and “GEORGIA: Police violence in Tbilisi while President Zurabishvili calls for quick EU actions”. I also used the opportunity of being in Tbilisi to meet state and non-state actors as well as lawyers involved in the case of the Stoians and to collect some unpublished information about the couple. A member of their family was also in Tbilisi.

At the end of the second hearing taking place after my departure from Georgia, the court found that a third hearing was necessary to try to solve a crucial issue: the interpretation of the debates and the translation of printed or written court documents in Romanian, as strongly required by Mihai, his wife and their lawyers instead of the English language imposed until then by the judicial authorities.

By Willy Fautre 

Published in The European Times 

On 20 and 26 December 2024, Tbilisi City Court held hearings to decide whether Georgia should extradite Adina Stoian and her husband Mihai arrested in August 2024 on the Turkish-Georgian border on the basis of an Interpol arrest warrant issued on France’s request.

A few days after mid-December, I happened to be in Tbilisi for The European Times to cover the unstable political situation and the demonstrations in the country following the contested results of the parliamentary elections and the subsequent election of a new contested pro-Kremlin president by the new parliament. On this occasion, I published two articles titled “GEORGIA: Election of an ex-footballer as the new president booed by demonstrators” and “GEORGIA: Police violence in Tbilisi while President Zurabishvili calls for quick EU actions”. I also used the opportunity of being in Tbilisi to meet state and non-state actors as well as lawyers involved in the case of the Stoians and to collect some unpublished information about the couple. A member of their family was also in Tbilisi.

At the end of the second hearing taking place after my departure from Georgia, the court found that a third hearing was necessary to try to solve a crucial issue: the interpretation of the debates and the translation of printed or written court documents in Romanian, as strongly required by Adina and Mihai Stoian and their lawyers instead of the English language imposed until then by the judicial authorities.

Published in the Journal of CESNUR

By Rosita Šorytė. 

ABSTRACT: Opposition to groups stigmatized as “cults” has (re-)emerged in recent years as a significant social force in countries as diverse as China and Argentina. The article examines six national situations—United States, China, Russia, France, Japan, and Argentina—and the different interests inspiring the local anti-cult campaigns. In its second part, the article argues that, while remaining different, anti-cult campaigns also have common elements and are supported by the lobbying efforts of diverse social actors such as the umbrella anti-cult federation FECRIS, the research consortium Invictus, the international diplomatic action of France, Russia, and China, international TV networks that have allied themselves with the anti-cult movements (primarily Netflix), anti-trafficking agencies interested in expanding their activity to “cults,” and private individual and corporate donors. While there is not a single “hidden hand” coordinating the anti-cult activities throughout the world, the role of these coordinating agencies should not be under-estimated. KEYWORDS: Anti-Cultism, Anti-Cult Movement, FECRIS, Invictus, MIVILUDES, Brainwashing.

By Willy Fautre. 

Source: Europeantimes.news

Full article here. 

On 28 November, it will be one year since a SWAT team of around 175 policemen wearing black masks, helmets, and bullet proof vests, simultaneously descended at 6 am on eight separate houses and apartments in and around Paris but also in Nice where Romanian yoga practitioners had decided to go into spiritual retreat. The police forces were then brandishing semi-automatic rifles, shouting, making very loud noises, crashing doors and putting everything upside down.

The November 2023 raids were not an operation against a terrorist or armed group or a drug cartel. They were raids targeting eight private places mainly used by peaceful Romanian yoga practitioners, but the police suspected these places to be used for illegal activities: traffic in human beings, sexual exploitation and forcible confinement.

by Bitter Winter

Mihai and Adina Stoian in happier times.

We, the undersigned, respectfully ask the authorities of Georgia, 

(a) to free on bail as soon as possible Mihai and Adina Stoian arrested in Georgia on August 22, 2024; 

(b) to refuse their extradition to France, based on the fact that their alleged “complicity in rape” would have been performed by “mental manipulation” and “abuse of weakness” of women they allegedly persuaded to embrace the beliefs of the Romanian yoga group MISA anchored in foreign philosophies and have private meetings with MISA’s founder;

considering 

• that “mental manipulation” and “abuse of weakness” are imaginary crimes and are therefore not part of international law 
• that they are defined as crimes in France but not in most other democratic countries
• that the Stoians’ case is a by-product of the prosecution of MISA’s founder Gregorian Bivolaru, who is currently in jail in France with several co-workers.

We are scholars in religious studies and new religious movements and human rights defenders with different levels of knowledge of MISA. Some of us personally know the Stoians and appreciate inter alia Mihai Stoian’s work through the NGO Soteria International in favor of freedom of religion or belief for all. 

By Massimo Introvigne
Source here. 

Georgian media coverage of the arrest of the Stoians. Screenshot.

On August 22, 2024, Mihai and Adina Stoian, well-known yoga teachers of MISA, the Movement for Spiritual Integration into the Absolute, were arrested when they entered in Georgia, as part of a tourist trip, through the border with Türkiye at Sarpi. Georgian media, obviously fed by the police and anti-cultists, reported that the Stoians are wanted in France and have also been prosecuted “in Finland and Romania for child prostitution and rape.” The latter information is false. As far as they know, the Stoians are not under any prosecution in Finland or Romania. Only when they were arrested in Georgia, they were notified of an international arrest warrant from the Court of Paris, France. Of what exactly are they accused?

Contents:

Articles

• Soka Gakkai’s Interpretation of the Principle “Three Thousand Realms in a Single Moment of Life” and Ikeda’s Climate Action. By Massimo Introvigne
• Ecoselves as Part of Ecosystems: What Can Daisaku Ikeda’s Philosophy and Practice Contribute to a Cultural Transformation Regarding Attitudes and Behaviors Towards Climate Change? By Olivia Fuchs 
• The Treasure Tower: The Peace Proposal 2020, Daisaku Ikeda’s “Last Word” on Climate Action. By Rosita Šorytė

Research Notes

• Sacred Eroticism or Sexual Magic? Liselotte Frisk’s Research on MISA by Massimo Introvigne 
• The Nylund Report of 2005 and the Frisk Study of 2019: Parallels and Differences. By Rosita Šorytė 
• Liselotte Frisk and MISA: An Emic View of a Yoga School and Its Perils. By Camelia Marin
  
  Read here

Article published on Eureporter.co 

The questions raised by this article are: 

• What is the origin of such a disproportionate police operation targeting yoga practitioners?
• Which groups are behind these allegations? 

Learn more about the French governmental anti-cult agency MIVILUDES. 

Read the full article here

More articles on the topic: 
https://europeantimes.news/2024/09/france-yoga-disproportionate-raids-abuses-settlement-scores/

"The brutal and discriminatory treatment of groups that practice sacred eroticism (the category established by Massimo Introvigne) are behaviours reminiscent of the shameful stains on the history of European democracies: sending people to psychiatric institutions because they ”adhere to ideas differing from those which are usually shared by social consensus”, or sending women who had given birth to children out of wedlock to educational centres. The states responsible for these acts (Italy, Ireland) have many years ago repudiated these cruel measures. It would be appropriate for the French authorities, together with the public opinion in the country of Voltaire, to rethink the repressive policy against adults who make a free and voluntary choice of their conscience and therefore follow precepts of their own will". - Quote from the editorial

https://www.revistadrepturileomului.ro/sumar_3_2024.html

by Massimo Introvigne

Thierry Valle, President of CAP-LC.

Not for the first time, France’s largest anti-cult organization UNADFI (Union nationale des associations de défense des familles et de l’individu), which is largely financed by the government, i.e., by French taxpayers, was caught red-handed publishing defamatory statements, then refusing to correct them.

On December 2, 2024, the Justice Court of Marseille ordered UNADFI to publish on its website an answer by the UN ECOSOC-accredited CAP-LC (Coordination of associations and individuals for freedom of conscience) to an article the anti-cult group had reproduced on February 12, 2014, from the French magazine “Charlie Hebdo.” During the discussion in the French Parliament of the new anti-cult statute, noting the opposition to the law of the majority of the French senators, “Charlie-Hebdo” had attributed it to the campaign of criticism of CAP-LC, which it accused of being a front for the Church of Scientology and other “cults.” CAP-LC asked the UNADFI to publish its answer to the article, but the anti-cult association refused, which led to the lawsuit.

Source: HRWF - Human Rights Without Frontiers
 

In the framework of its 2023 Call for Projects, MIVILUDES (Interministerial Mission of Vigilance and Combat against Cultic Deviances) generously allocated a state subsidy of 150,000 EUR to CAFFES (Family Support Center Facing Cultic Control). This represents a considerable, if not completely disproportionate, grant for a small association with 90% of its annual budget funded with public money.

If the size of the allocated amount does not constitute an irregularity in itself, the appropriateness of such state generosity raises serious questions and suspicions as every year state funding keeps artificially alive an association that would close its doors without it. 

Soruce: OSCE

Warsaw, 30 September to 11 October 2024

Institutional torture can take many forms, and one particularly insidious manifestation is when control and ideology take precedence over  human dignity[i]. The case of the French police’s treatment of Romanian yoga practitioners is a stark example of this.

https://freedomofconscience.eu/2024-warsaw-human-dimension-conference-france-institutional-torture/

A report submitted by Human Rights Without Frontiers to this Conference details how the French police, driven by an ideological distortion regarding spiritual minorities, conducted a disproportionate and violent raid on the homes of these Yoga practitioners. The practitioners were then subjected to inhumane detention conditions, biased interrogations, and a complete disregard for their rights and due process. This was not physical torture, but a systemic, institutional abuse conveyed through inappropriate decisions and repeated, applied actions.

By Raffaella Di Marzio - Center for Studies on Freedom of Religion Belief and Conscience (LIREC).

Paper from the Journal of CESNUR

Link to the full paper here

ABSTRACT: This paper analyzes the experiences of ten practitioners from different yoga centers, all members of the International Federation of Yoga and Meditation ATMAN. The objective is to detect the meanings that the interviewed members attribute to their experience based on their autobiographical reconstructions. They are examined in the light of a multidisciplinary model developed within the framework of the psychology of religion for the study of the conversion/affiliation process. This model will be complemented by the perspectives of humanistic and transpersonal psychology. Based on the data collected, an evaluation of the psychological consequences of attending schools following the teachings of Gregorian Bivolaru on the personality of the informants will be proposed. This project is also aimed at verifying whether, in the experiences of the informants interviewed, factors and elements of the above‑mentioned multidisciplinary model are detected, which I already identified in previous surveys carried out with twenty-three members of five other religious and spiritual movements— and, if yes, to what extent. KEYWORDS: Religious Movements: Affiliation, Yoga, Sacred Eroticism, Gregorian Bivolaru, Tantra, Erotic Continence, MISA, Movement for Spiritual Integration into the Absolute, International Federation of Yoga and Meditation ATMAN. 

The French National Assembly has re-introduced in the amended law on “cults” the strange crime of “psychological subjection” the Senate had eliminated.

by Eileen Barker*

Source: Bitter Winter

Broadly speaking, there are two kinds of political approach to legislation. There are those states that punish perpetrators for an actual harm “after” they have been proved guilty in court of law. This is the approach to be found in the USA, the UK, and most other Western democracies. Alternatively, there are those States which claim to protect their citizens from potential harm “before” any criminal act has been perpetrated  This latter approach tends to be found among some of the  more totalitarian states, such as Russia and China—but also, it might appear, in France for instigating a law that is designed to protect its citizens from potential harm from groups exhibiting “dérives sectaires,” a concept roughly equivalent to religious movements referred to by the pejorative term “cults” in English. This can mean not only that behavior by one religion, labelled as a “cult,” can be deemed criminal in law whilst the same act performed by a group considered a “religion” could be perfectly legal, but also that “cults” may be legally condemned before they have actually done anything illegal other than being labelled a “cult.” 

There is, however, no agreed definition of a “cult,” the term generally being used to denote a religion or other movement of which one disapproves. I cannot tell the number of times I have been asked whether a particular movement is a “cult” or a “real religion.” If I ask what the questioners mean by a “cult,” they are rarely able to give a coherent reply, but might, on being pressed, mumble something about brainwashing, child abuse, suicide, murder, or belief in some kind of satanic heresy, whereupon I am usually able to reassure them that the movement in question does not fit their description.

Eileen Barker and her 1984 seminal book debunking the idea that those joining the Unification Movement did so before they were “brainwashed.”

Source: The Journal of CESNUR

by Alessandro Amicarelli - Director of FOB (European Federation for Freedom of Belief)

ABSTRACT: On December 7, 2023, an important development happened in the Argentinian court
case of the Buenos Aires Yoga School (BAYS). The Court of Appeals annulled the elevation to trial of
the defendants and sent the case back to the investigating judge, urging him to evaluate the new
evidence that had surfaced, in dialogue with the parties. The prosecutors filed an appeal in cassation
against the Court of Appeals decision. The BAYS case is paradoxical, as the prosecutors insist that
several mature women were victimized and compelled to work as prostitutes by the movement. On the
other hand, all women deny being victims and having ever worked as prostitutes in their lives. The
article insists on the crucial role of the forensic psychological expertises that found the women “normal”
and believable. It also emphasizes the dissenting opinion of one of the three appeal judges, who would
have simply acquitted all the defendants and closed the case.
KEYWORDS: BAYS, Buenos Aires Yoga School, PROTEX, Brainwashing, Anti-Cult Movement in Argentina.

Introduction
On December 7, 2023, the 2nd Chamber of the National Court of Appeals for Criminal and Correctional Matters of Argentina (hereinafter “Court of Appeals”) rendered three rulings in the Buenos Aires Yoga School (BAYS) case and annulled the elevation to trial of the defendants (Sala 2 de la Cámara Nacional de
Apelaciones en lo Criminal y Correccional Federal de Argentina 2023a, 2023b,2023c). Seventeen BAYS members were prosecuted for alleged human trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation, money laundering, smuggling, and illicit association. The Court of Appeals’ ruling means that the case file must
be returned to the lower court. The latter is urged to examine the newly filedevidence and the constitutional exceptions raised by the defense.

The Journal of CESNUR has published detailed reports by Massimo Introvigne and Susan Palmer on the BAYS and its trial (Introvigne 2023a; Palmer 2023).
This is an extraordinary case where, based on the accusations of one single anti-cult activist, the prosecutors of the anti-human-trafficking unit PROTEX—who have fully embraced (Introvigne 2023b) the unscientific and discredited theory of brainwashing (Introvigne 2022)—insist that a number of mature women were
victimized and forced to work as prostitutes and to transfer the earnings from that activity to the yoga school.
It must be noted that, without exceptions, all the women involved in this case, who are middle-aged professionals, deny being “victims” of the BAYS and having ever worked as prostitutes in their lives. Yet, the prosecutors maintain the paradoxical theory that, having been brainwashed by the BAYS, the women could
have been victims and prostitutes without realizing it (Fautré 2023a, 2023b).

The defendants were absolved and the judge recommended to investigate the “scandalous” abuses of the anti-trafficking agencies and psychologists.

by Massimo Introvigne 

https://bitterwinter.org/iglesia-tabernaculo-internacional-argentinian-court-chastises-protex-for-fabricating-victims/

Judge Roberto Manuel López Arango, who presided the court and drafted the decision. From Facebook.

There are horror movies and then there are “horror cults.” In the incredible case of the Buenos Aires Yoga School (BAYS) the expression “secta del horror” was liberally used by the media. But it seems that in Argentina it is now a general category: an Evangelical church called Iglesia Tabernáculo Internacional (ITI) was also called “secta del horror” by the media.

What the cases of the BAYS, the ITI, and Cómo vivir por fe (How to Live by Faith), the Argentinian affiliate of the Australian movement Jesus Christians, have in common is the key role of a special prosecutorial office called PROTEX (Procuraduría para el Combate de la Trata y Explotación de Personas, Office of the Procurator for Combating the Trafficking and Exploitation of Persons). PROTEX raids with great fanfare and the presence of the media groups it accuses of being “cults” practicing “coercive persuasion” or “brainwashing” and “trafficking” their members, arrests their leaders, and “liberates” the “victims”—who unanimously deny being victims.

While the BAYS case is still pending, the Jesus Christians were found not guilty of trafficking or any other crimes on November 28, 2022, by the Federal Criminal and Correctional Court of Sáenz Peña, with an order severely criticizing PROTEX.

Even more severe for PROTEX, the other prosecutors, and the anti-cult “expert” psychologists who see “cults” and “trafficking” everywhere is the decision rendered on February 1, 2024, by the Court of Paraná in the case of the ITI.

The struggle of New Religious Movements in the current antagonistic climate of state and mass media is reaching higher levels.

Often the term “Brainwashing” seems to be used in the discussions of cults - how is this term relevant?

Most scholars of new religious movements agree that “brainwashing” does not exist, and its incrimination is basically a fraud. When the normal process of religious persuasion has as its object beliefs and practices that the powers that be regard as “normal,” it is argued that there is no “brainwashing.” When the beliefs and practices are non-conventional or unpopular, this is offered as evidence that only “brainwashed” victims can embrace them because they have been put in a status of “psychological subjugation” (or “subjection”).

The French government solemnly proclaims that through the new law it is not criminalizing beliefs, only the techniques through which certain beliefs are promoted. In fact, however, the proof that a belief has been inculcated through “illegal” techniques is that the anti-cultists, the MIVILUDES, the majority of society, or the media regard it as a “cultic deviance.” Source: https://bitterwinter.org/france-plans-to-make-a-bad-law-worse/

Prof. Massimo Introvigne interview offered to Soteria International brings further perspectives. Here is third part of three.

Considering the similarities and repetition of the police raids upon spiritual communities, in different countries, a certain question is rising: are NRM - New Religious Movements or spiritual communities in danger?

In France, as prof Massimo Introvigne wrote in his article "France Plans to Make a Bad Law Worse - the anti-cult About-Picard law is ineffective against real abuses and dangerous for religious liberty. The government wants to make it even more dangerous." the situation of spiritual communities becomes increasingly difficult.

On November 15, the government presented a draft law to “reinforce the fight against cultic deviances.” The reason offered for a new crackdown on “cults” is that the number of “saisines” received by the MIVILUDES is growing. As “Bitter Winter” has documented, the “saisines” are not reports of actual incidents, include simple questions sent to the MIVILUDES, and may easily be false or manipulated. ...

The anti-cult measures are also reinforced by allowing the anti-cult associations to be present in the court cases against “cults” as civil parties and by encouraging judges and prosecutors to seek the opinion of the MIVILUDES on groups they are judging or prosecuting.

The heart of the new draft law is the creation of a new crime of “psychological subjection.” Those who place their victims in a state of “psychological subjection” through “serious or repeated pressure or the use of techniques capable of modifying their judgement” will be punished with a jail penalty of three years, or of seven years when the defendants are part of an “organized band” routinely using these techniques, in other words a “cult.” The crime is perpetrated when the use of the “psychological subjection” techniques has “the effect of causing a serious deterioration in the persons’ physical or mental health or leading the persons to perform an act or abstain from an act which is seriously prejudicial to them.” “Psychological subjection” will also affect already existing crimes as an aggravating circumstance.  Source: https://bitterwinter.org/france-plans-to-make-a-bad-law-worse/

Prof. Massimo Introvigne offered new perspectives and explanation during the interview, as it follows here, in the second part of three.

In December 2023, the French parliament debated to reintroduce or not the controversial law of mental manipulation. This law has a history in France.

It is necessary to open up to see the comprehensive perspective offered through academic studies, to understand that people who join spiritual movements are normal people, merely having their particular beliefs or practices. And as long as they respect the laws of their country they should enjoy freedom, respect and social protection, just like any other citizen. Yet the repetitive police raids and their scandalous presentation in mass media tell a different story.

There are several publications and academic studies on questionable concepts such as "abuse of weakness" or "brainwashing".

When France introduced in 2001 the controversial anti-cult About-Picard law, the first draft tried to punish “mental manipulation.” International and French scholars, and leading legal experts, protested that this was just a synonym of the discredited theory of “brainwashing,” exposed as pseudo-science and a tool to discriminate against unpopular religions by academics and courts of law in several countries.

Afraid that a law against “mental manipulation” would run into constitutional problems, the anti-cult politicians backed off, and introduced instead the “abuse of weakness” (abus de faiblesse). This was another cosmetic and semantic game hiding their intention to criminalize “brainwashing.” However, finding evidence that something that does not exist caused concrete harm proved to be difficult. As Canadian scholar Susan Palmer demonstrated in her acclaimed Oxford University Press 2011 book “The New Heretics of France,” the About-Picard law is strong with the weak and weak with the strong.

If a religious movement lacks the resources to hire good lawyers and experts, its leaders may be convicted of the imaginary “abus de faiblesse” and go to jail. Groups that command significant resources would easily find ways of challenging a law born under a pseudo-scientific cloud. In fact, even groups guilty of real abuses—to be distinguished from the non-existing “brainwashing”—may take advantage of the vague wording of the law and get away with their crimes. Source: https://bitterwinter.org/france-plans-to-make-a-bad-law-worse/

Prof. Massimo Introvigne gives his insights on the subject of mental manipulation during an interview offered to Soteria International. Here is the first part of three.

Brainwashing theories: origins, application in the military field, and to religious groups, up to their discredit. Are mind control theories making a comeback?

by Massimo Introvigne*

*This article collects, for ease of reading, a series of articles published on this site in August 2021.

Source: https://bitterwinter.org/brainwashing-theories-the-myth-and-the-history-of-mind-control/

Table of Contents

• “Brainwashing”: A False Accusation Against Unpopular Minorities
  • Origins of the brainwashing theories
  • Brainwashing, CIA and the fight against Communism
• Testing “Brainwashing” Theories: CIA and the MK-Ultra Experiment
  • The MK-ULTRA project
  • Depatterning and psychic driving
• How “Brainwashing” Theories Were Applied to Religion
  • L. Ron Hubbard and brainwashing
  • The Battle for the Mind: A Physiology of Conversion and Brainwashing
  • The birth of anti-cult ideology
• The Fall of “Brainwashing” Theories in the Late Twentieth Century
  • The anti-cult movement and “deprogramming” practices
  • From the Fishman case and to the ban of deprogramming
• Are “Brainwashing” Theories Coming Back?
  • The parental alienation syndrome
  • Brainwashing and 9/11
  • “Trumpism” and QAnon

“Brainwashing”: A False Accusation Against Unpopular Minorities

We are at it again. New books are launched with great fanfare that revive old theories of “brainwashing,” and almost everybody, from Donald Trump to Bill Gates, is accused of using “mind control techniques” to gather followers. And of course, that they use “brainwashing” is an old accusation against groups discriminated and labeled as “cults.”

Do these techniques exist? That the answer is “no” is one of the key conclusions of the academic discipline of the study of new religious movements (NRM studies). A tiny minority of scholars of religious movements, with connections to the anti-cult activists, rejected this conclusion, seceded from the majority, and created a different discipline of “cultic studies.” However, as Mike Ashcraft emphasized in his authoritative textbook on the academic study of new religious movements, while NRM studies are generally regarded as a legitimate part of the scholarly study of religions, “cultic studies” are “not mainstream scholarship.”