Soteria International, in collaboration with:
EMISCO - European Muslim Initiative for Social Cohesion.
POYRA - Path of YahRa
Family Federation for World Peace and Unification
Invite you to the following conference: 

Human Rights and Perspectives In and Out of Spiritual Communities

Date & Time: Friday, 12th of June 2026 from 10.00 – 12.00 CET
Venue: Kulturhuset Union, DYNAMO room 
Address: Nørre Allé 7, 2200 København N

and ONLINE through ZOOM. 

Working in the field of freedom of religion and belief, we encounter multiple cases worldwide in which spiritual belief systems, groups or religious practices are restricted or even shut down by national law, fueled by media campaigns that foster societal prejudices and misconceptions. 

This is influencing, to a major extent, each individual's ability to exercise freedom of religion and belief, since their perspective on various spiritual and religious groups will inevitably be coloured by how the media presents them. This challenge of spirituality and religion is what we aim to address in this conference. 

The list of 30 human rights from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) by the United Nations includes Article 18: “Freedom of thought and religion” that ensures that each individual's right to free choice in following any religion or spiritual group must be protected, and if a major influencer on public opinion (such as the media) is biased in this respect, we see it as our call to raise awareness to the public and to the authorities concerned. 

The speakers at the conference are:
- Bashy Quraishy on behalf of EMISCO 
- Gregory Christensen on behalf of Youths for Human Rights 
- Eva Miskelova on behalf of POYRA 
- Nobuhiro Igarashi on behalf of Unification Church 
- Jonathan Selvig Skjalholt on behalf of Soteria International
and representatives from diferent spiritual communities.

We aim to debate the image painted by media campaigns against spiritual and religious movements, as well as a direct, firsthand account from a representative of a targeted spiritual or religious group. In this way, looking to bridge the gap between the inside and outside perspectives - aiming to find a common sense and ground to move forward from.  

Questions we will address during the conference: 

1. Are the modern media able to uphold one of their foundational goals: “striving for objectivity and neutrality? In this way, functioning as a means to provide unbiased information to citizens on the state of affairs. 
2. How come some spiritual and religious groups are being presented in such an obviously disadvantageous light by the media? 
3. Are we seeing now an attempt of the media to create “TRIAL BY MEDIA” against spirituality? Is the witch hunt still existing? 
4. Why is the perspective from inside the spiritual or religious group often neglected in media publications?

The link for ONLINE connection is:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84942453098?pwd=n9O3M6BIe28TKSGXvsZevN1PsTyRFr.1
Meeting ID: 849 4245 3098 Passcode: 406875