Here is an excerpt and link to a 1998 "public briefing" conducted by CSCE, in which "Jehovah's Witnesses" European activities are made to be the primary focus.
Willy Fautré, Director of Human Rights Without Frontiers, and James McCabe from WTS Legal are the 2 guest speakers.
James Pellechia and Jim Andrik of the WTS are audience members who ask leading questions in the discussion session.
The opening statement below gives good background info on CSCE.
I will also try to post some excerpts from the report.
Again, can you picture Jesus, Paul, or other member of the first century christian congregation appearing before a non-Roman controlled governmental body to request their help with the christians dealings with the Roman government?
When did any of them ever appear before a governmental body except when they were under arrest?
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DETERIORATION OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY IN EUROPE
WEDNESDAY, JULY 22, 1998
Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe
Washington, D.C.
The briefing convened in Room HC-5, U.S. Capitol, Washington, D.C., at 1:10 p.m., Wayne Merry, Helsinki Commission Staff Member, presiding.
Mr. Merry. Good afternoon, and welcome to this public briefing by the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe. My name is Wayne Merry, Senior Advisor to the Commission.
I've started a little late on the view that some people might have as much difficulty finding this room as I did, but I would like to proceed now.
For people who are not familiar with the Commission and its work, let me briefly describe the procedure we will use today.
The Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, also known as the Helsinki Commission, is a small, but independent, U.S. government agency created by law for the purpose of monitoring implementation of the commitments of the Helsinki Final Act and of other documents of the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe, the OSCE.
The focus of our activities is very heavily on human rights questions. We have been in existence for over 20 years, and I think have a laudable track record over that period.
The work of the Commission is all public; we do no classified work. A good deal of what we do is conducted in public briefings and public hearings of this type. This session is being transcribed and will be published and available both in hard copy and on the Commission's web site, however, not too soon, it takes a while for the transcriptions to come back from the printers.
There is information on the Commission available on the table outside, and if any of you wish to be on our addressee list or find out more about us members of the Commission staff here will be happy to help you.
Our procedure today will be to hear statements from our two visiting guest experts, and then we will have an open discussion session, in which there can be comments and questions from members of the audience on the very important theme that we are dealing with today.
Let me say that the question of problems of religious liberty is one which is occupying an increasing priority and attention from the Helsinki Commission. This is by no means a new theme in our work. During the Cold War, however, most of the attention that we gave on questions of religious liberty were focused in the eastern countries, countries with at least formerly communist and atheist ideologies, and the problem was one of the situation of religious believers in state political systems which were either overtly hostile or discriminatory toward those believers and towards organized religion.
Today, in the aftermath of the Cold War, and regrettably the geographic scope of our interest has widened, as we are concerned with what we see as a developing pattern of discrimination against religious minorities and other belief groups in a number of countries in the OSCE region.
I will note a number of specific cases on which the Commission has been very active. Most of you are aware of the new law in the Russian Federation on religious activities. This is one which members of the Commission and Commission staff have had an active dialogue with Russian Government officials and legislators, and while there have been some positive developments on that legislation in recent months it is certainly one which we follow with concern and which we will be continuing to monitor very closely.
Recently, Uzbekistan has promulgated a new rule on religious activities which we find very disturbing, both because of the actual content of the statute and because in some of the public statements made by senior government officials at the time that it was introduced, and this is a case which I think we are going to be following with great attention.
Many of the other former communist countries have similar problems which are the focus of a good deal of our efforts. However, unlike during the period of the Cold War, we now must devote a fair amount of our attention to countries further west. It is not new for the Commission to express concern about problems with religious minorities in some of the western countries. For example, we have been concerned about problems with religious minorities in Greece for many years.
More recently, however, we have had to spend time and attention on countries where traditionally this had not been much of a subject of concern for us. There is, however, for example, a new law in Austria, which members of the Helsinki Commission spoke directly with members of the Austrian Parliament during a trip in January, which is a subject of concern.
More recently, the Inquiry Commission of the German Federal Bundestag issued its final report, which we have been examining, and which certainly has some very disturbing elements.
Also, there have been practices in France and in Belgium, which we shall hear more about today, which are disturbing to us.
Let me say that the Helsinki Commission proceeds always on the basis of those principles contained in the Helsinki Final Act and in other OSCE documents, so this is not the case of a United States organization trying to apply American standards to European countries. We are very well aware of the fact that most European countries proceed from a tradition of a state sanctioned or state sponsored church, but the principles contained in the Helsinki documents are internationally accepted principles by all of the states party to the Helsinki Final Act, and they involve, with great priority, fundamental freedoms of religious belief and other belief and of practice. And, it is these principles which we seek to monitor and where we hope to improve compliance.
Let me note that today's briefing is only one in a series of public sessions sponsored by the Helsinki Commission on this important subject. The Helsinki Commission will be in collaboration with the House International Relations Committee sponsoring a joint public hearing next week, on Thursday, July 30th at 10:00 in the morning, in Room 2172 in the Rayburn House Office Building, on continuing religious intolerance in Europe, and you are all certainly invited to attend that session.
Let me also note that the priority and interest which the Helsinki Commission devotes to this important question is reflected in the recent creation in the Helsinki Commission's permanent staff of a position, counsel for religious liberties, occupied by Karen Lord who is with us today. If any of you have any specific questions concerning the Commission's work in this area, I suggest you may wish to be in touch with her.
Today we are honored to have two expert witnesses, who will give us their views on this subject. These are Mr. Willy Fautré, Director of the Human Rights Without Frontiers organization in Belgium, and Mr. James McCabe, who is the Assistant General Counsel of the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, and I will ask each of them to speak in turn.
Mr. Fautré, who was born in Belgium in 1944, is both the founder and the chairman of Human Rights Without Frontiers, which is a secular organization promoting rule of law, democracy and human rights. The organization was created in 1989, fortuitously, the year which the Berlin Wall came down, and it gives priority to the field of religious liberty, and it has a press service in both English and French.
This link will take you to the rest of this very lengthy report: