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Chamber of Representatives of Belgium
EXTRAORDINARY SESSION - 4 OCTOBER 1995
PROPOSAL
aiming to establish a parliamentary inquiry commission charged with developing a policy to combat sects and the dangers these sects pose to persons and particularly to minors
(Filed by Messrs. Didier Reynders and Jacques Simonet)
DEVELOPMENTS
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,
Our Constitution in its article 19 recognizes freedom of worship. The State is secular; it allows everyone to express their opinions freely, subject to the prosecution of offenses committed on that occasion.
Sects make use of these freedoms recognized for churches to establish themselves and recruit adherents in our country.
A sect can be defined as a minority contractual grouping of converted volunteers sharing the same elitist belief, subject to a charismatic leader or to a hierarchical, centralized and authoritarian administration, whose aims may be religious, political, economic or otherwise, but whose essential avowed characteristic is a pure conception of the divine to which one must submit to ensure one's salvation.
(*) First session of the 49th legislature.
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A recent journalistic investigation reports the presence in Belgium of about one hundred sects grouping some 50,000 adherents. The phenomenon is expanding and is not without danger.
Under the guise of a spiritual quest, sects progressively detach their sympathizers from all contact with the society they deem evil.
Their aim is to create communities withdrawn into themselves and demanding of their members a very great availability and total submission. This is the case, for example and among many others, of New Acropolis. This non-profit association (asbl), established in Belgium since 1977, presents itself as an "international center of philosophical training."
During cycles of lectures, it detects the most assiduous spectators and offers them a course in philosophy whose examination confers on the laureate the title of member of New Acropolis. From that moment, the obligations begin: monthly contribution and volunteer work.
Over time and through his philosophical training, the adepte is invited to invest himself full-time in the sect to in turn respond to the acropolitan ideal. Thus the formula of the apprentice-adept worker makes it possible to complete the indoctrination phase. To psychological and emotional dependence are added material dependence and the break with the professional world.
Sects infringe on human freedom by preventing the adherent from leaving the movement. They break the individual and the family.
Faced with this state of affairs, our law is powerless. Both at Belgian and European levels, there is no specific legislation regulating sects. No measure protects families against the hold of sects. This gap is all the more prejudicial with regard to the problem of the protection of minors, whether it concerns adolescents recruited by sects or children of adherents.
Let us cite the case of a mother adherent of the Ange Albert. This spiritist sect forbids its members to resort to conventional medicine, preferring, for example, the injection of a mixture of blood and sauerkraut juice ... At the time of the divorce, the mother had been granted custody of the children. After five years of unsuccessful proceedings before the courts, the father did not return the children to their mother after an exercise of visitation rights. Finally, he obtained a revision of the judgment.
Today, indeed, when one of the parents belongs to a sectarian group, custody of the children is generally entrusted to the other spouse. But nothing guarantees against the risks of abduction and the sending of children to another branch of the sect installed abroad.
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Moreover and a fortiori, this case law has no effect when both parents are members of the sect.
All the dangers that sects pose to the individual justify that Parliament undertake a thorough reflection in order to determine their causes and consequences and to debate the measures to be taken to remedy them.
To carry out this task, the legislator should be granted the widest powers conferred on parliamentary inquiry commissions, in order to be able to collect all necessary information and proceed with all appropriate hearings.
The present proposal therefore aims to establish a parliamentary inquiry commission charged with examining the issue of sects, their causes and their influences on the individual and the family, as well as the measures to be taken.
This inquiry commission will have all the rights defined by article 56 of the Constitution and the law of 3 May 1880 on parliamentary inquiries.
It will conduct its work in the spirit of the missions previously entrusted to inquiry commissions: to outline general options and prepare legislation; it will therefore refrain from encroaching on the powers of the executive or the judiciary, no more than it will intrude into ongoing judicial matters, whether in terms of hearings or the handing over of documents.
Finally, it must conduct hearings behind closed doors.
This commission will have the mission to: — study the direct or indirect influence of the action of sects in Belgium; — study the organization and the means at the disposal of sects at national and international level; — collect the opinions of the competent authorities and specialized experts; — examine the consequences related to frequenting sects for the individual and the family; — examine the consequences of the issue of the presence of minors in sects; — and formulate, on the basis of its work, any proposal aimed at regulating the activity of sects and protecting the individual and particularly minors as well as the family.
The inquiry commission shall report to the Chamber of Representatives within six months of its installation. Should it consider that certain aspects of its work are of a confidential nature, it may decide not to publish all or part of them.
D. REYNDERS
J. SIMONET
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PROPOSAL
Article one
A commission of inquiry is established charged with: — studying the direct or indirect influence of the action of sects in Belgium; — studying the organization and the means at the disposal of sects at national and international level; — collecting the opinions of the competent authorities and specialized experts; — examining the consequences related to frequenting sects for the individual and the family; — examining the consequences of the issue of the presence of minors in sects; — and formulating, on the basis of its work, any proposal aimed at regulating the activity of sects and protecting the individual, particularly the minor, as well as the family.
Art. 2
The commission will have all the powers provided for by article 56 of the Constitution and by the law of 3 May 1880 on parliamentary inquiries.
The commission will hear all persons it deems useful to summon; it must conduct these hearings behind closed doors.
It will establish the international contacts necessary for the accomplishment of its mission. Both in terms of hearings and the handing over of documents, it may not intrude into an ongoing judicial matter.
Art. 3
The commission is composed of 11 full members and 11 substitute members, appointed in accordance with the rule of proportional representation of the political groups.
Art. 4
The commission will present its report within six months of its installation. It may decide whether to publish all or part of its work.
21 September 1995.
D. REYNDERS
J. SIMONET