The Watchtower's nightmares have just began in France. On April the 9th the French Senate passed a new "anti-cult" law that will basically strengthen the hands of MIVILUDES, the French Agency, the official anti-cult Agency that is cracking down on dangerous cults. And guess who is their new target?
The Watchtower has been in their crosshairs for years with the Watchtower having been branded as a "sect" , a name that the Watchtower didn't like it one bit and has fought the Agency long and hard for years to reconsider. Well now with this new "anti-cult law" that the French Senate approved with 146 "yes" votes against the 104 "no's" the anti cult Agency MIVILUDES has been given new powers to go after cults that cause psychological traumas to their members. Reminds you someone you know?
The law’s name refers to “reinforcing the fight against cultic deviances.” The reason offered for a new crackdown on “cults” is that the number of reported incidents, received by the governmental anti-cult agency MIVILUDES is growing. So here really some of the main changes in the fight against cults that this new law introduces:
CHANGE 1:
Note that the State Council, when examining the draft law, recommended to drop this article as dangerous for freedom of speech and “the freedom of scientific debates.”
However, the government rejected the recommendation of the State Council and kept the article. The fight in the Senate only led to the introduction of a new paragraph protecting the “whistleblowers” who reveal questionable practices of medical companies. Although this primarily applies to medical companies it has broader ramifications in the way the French goverment will go to protect whistleblowers that expose cults and their practices. That of course extends to exjws who go after the Watchtower, as it stands in most cases they are not protected by the Law and Watchtower lawyers are free to go after them with the threat of legal repricautions.
CHANGE 2
The anti-cult measures are also reinforced by allowing the anti-cult associations to be present in the court cases, as was the case in the Australian Royal Commision against “cults” as civil parties and by encouraging judges and prosecutors to seek the opinion of the MIVILUDES on groups they are judging or prosecuting. Parliamentary amendments also gave a new and reinforced status to the MIVILUDES.
So what that means is the courts do not have to start from scratch reinventing the wheel whenever they have to deal with a cult case, they have their own anticult governmental agency to fill in the blanks for them. This way they don't have to waist precious time and have the Watchtower wasting their time either. And you know how that goes, they are professional time wasters, everytime there is a case against them they pretend they don't know a thing "we are a cult? What is a cult? What is a governing body? and etc" and then they proceed to waste the court weeks of proceedings before they even get to the point. France has now ended this nonsense, their own agency MIVILUDES comes in fills in the blanks for the court and the court accepts their report on the particular cult as legally established information and that's where they start from instead of having the Watchtower lawyers taking them around in circles.
CHANGE 3
The law creates a new crime of “psychological subjection,” which restricts the possibility of criticizing mainline medical treatments, and seriously endangers freedom of religion or belief.
In other words France has now become the first country as far as I can tell in Europe that recognises coercion to remain in a religion with the use of family pressure or application of punitive measures like disfellowshipping and shunning as a crime called "psychological subjection" and in that way the open the door for hundreds or even thousands of exjws to take the Watchtower to court for having been subjected to such coercion.
These are only few of these changes introduced by law in France and I will be returning with more updates on France as we have more news on this subject.
What do you think? Will this new law become a major obstacle for the Watchtower to operate in France? Will this law be copied by other European countries in their fight against psychological subjection that citizens are being made to endure when they join a cult? Let me know what you think in the comment section.