Malaysia

One important means of developing grassroots awareness of human rights issues is through the targeted distribution of pamphlets and booklets, containing educational information on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. To date, the Church has issued fourteen such informational publications in as many as 19 languages.

Restoring and Safeguarding Religious Freedom: A guide to protecting your human rights in Europe, details exactly what an individual can do if one is being discriminated against because of religion. The work explains and includes the international human rights instruments that protect an individual’s right to freedom of religion as well as the relevant articles from the constitutions of 13 countries. It also offers helpful tips on what to do in the face of religious intolerance, and provides contact information for human rights and governmental organisations that can help.

In 1997, the Church of Scientology International released this handbook in English, German, French, Spanish, Swedish, Danish, Dutch, Italian and Greek. A Russian edition was published in 1999 by the Moscow affiliate of one of Europe’s most respected human rights groups — the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights. Well received by government officials, religious leaders and human rights organisations, this booklet remains a perennial favourite at conferences promoting religious freedom.

A principal theme of the Church’s publications on human rights is that the UDHR is an effective educational tool in defusing the tensions that cause conflicts and advancing the principles of respect and tolerance. The concept is well articulated in the Church’s A Guidebook to Peace through Human Rights, published in 2002. This work clarifies how and why human rights are the best route towards sustained peace in the world, and includes practical advice on how to apply the UDHR in everyday life. The text of the Declaration is included in the booklet. The Church has distributed this publication to government officials, community leaders and the media, and has provided innumerable copies to the public at large. As the mayor of the town of Siena in Tuscany wrote after receiving the booklet, such initiatives help “create a culture” of human rights.

Concurrently, the Church of Scientology International has published How to Resolve Conflicts, a booklet that details the exact steps to isolate the real source of conflicts. Central to this publication is an essay by L. Ron Hubbard explaining why, despite the well-intended efforts of so many, some disputes seem endless and unsolvable. Mr. Hubbard outlined the natural law behind such conflicts and precisely how to resolve disagreements large and small — information that, as he writes, “is worth working with in any situation where one is trying to bring peace.”

As a further means to resolve conflicts and end the resultant violence, in 2003 the Church of Scientology International launched an awareness campaign that stretched all across Europe. It utilised billboards, posters and advertisements in Britain, Russia, Austria, Switzerland, Ireland, Spain, Italy, Denmark and Belgium, with informational messages appearing in major newspapers from Spain’s El Mundo to Switzerland’s Neue Zürcher Zeitung to Russia’s Izvestia. A series of advertisements advocating human rights was also run in several pan-European publications including the International Herald Tribune, European Voice, and the European editions of Time and Newsweek.

The widespread and sustained character of the Church’s educational actions in this field has won the attention of leading human rights advocates, including the rapporteur of the European Parliament’s 2002 Annual Report on Human Rights in the World, who praised the Church for “the awareness-raising campaign of what human rights are as well as the practical assistance to those whose rights have been violated.”