From "Ecumenical News International", sponsored by the World
 Council of Churches...  (Appeared January/February 1996)
   
   German Government minister vows to expel Scientologists
   Bulletin-96-0043
   
   Bonn, 19 January (ENI)-- A german government minister has vowed
 to use "all available means" to expel the Church of Scientology
 from Germany.
   
   The Federal Minister for Families, Claudia Nolte, has released an
 official brochure warning citizens against the US-based
 organisation.  Nolte also told a press conference that the Church
 of Scientology was one of the world's most aggressive sects.  She
 accused it of using "unscrupulous practices", and said it was
 pursuing "the usual aim of ruling the world" by "infiltrating
 national economies" and "destroying established social structures".
   
   Nolte told journalists that she had appealed to Germany's
 provincial governments to revoke the church's status as a religious
 institution.  She had also urged the Office for Protecting the
 Constitution to monitor its activities.
   
   Scientology, she said, was built on "an organisation whose
 ideology has totalitarian traits, and which ruthlessly and
 unscrupulously carries out dubious business."  Scientology, Nolte
 claimed, was neither a religion, nor a community with a particular
 world view, nor a church, but represented solely economic
 interests.
   
   The Church of Scientology, founded in 1954 by the American
 science-fiction writer Ronald Hubbard, has an estimated 30,000
 members in Germany, and worldwide membership of seven million,
 including film stars Tom Cruise and John Travolta.
   
   In an appeal to the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in
 Europe last October, Scientologists accused the German government
 of denying its members jobs and school places in retaliation for
 its work in highlighting human rights abuses in Germany.
   
   Both the governing Christian Democratic Union and opposition
 Social Democratic Party have banned Scientologists from party
 membership, while several cities have prohibited church members
 from renting public halls.
   
   The governments of at least three German Lander (provinces) -
 Baden-Wuerttemberg, Hamburg and Mecklenburg-Vorpommen - maintain
 documentation centres and employ commissioners to alert the public
 to the dangers of religious sects, whose nationwide membership was
 estimated by the German Psychologists Union in 1994 at 2.5 million.
   
   The Church of Scientology's office in Washington has released a
 vigorous rebuttal of Nolte's comments.
   
   "Ms Nolte's experience as part of the former East German atheist
 regime has apparently scarred her with a lasting hatred for
 religion," said Heber Jentsch, president of the Church of
 Scientology International.
   
   "This move is clearly government retaliation for our
 international exposure of religious discrimination in Germany. 
 They are embarrassed and are desperate to silence us," Jentsch said
 in a public statement.
   
   He added that a Scientology publication had recently exposed "the
 German government's promotion of violence and hatred against
 minorities and compares it to the treatment of the Jews during the
 1930's ... They [the German government] refuse to acknowledge
 international reports whch acknowledge discrimination."