Berlin District Posts Warning About Scientology

Source: SPIEGEL Online International - January 23 2009
A poster denouncing Scientology has gone up on a public kiosk outside the Scientology headquarters in Berlin.
Local officials warn that Scientology may be "undemocratic" -- part of an ongoing battle between Berlin and the guardians of L. Ron Hubbard's arcane belief system.
With Tom Cruise in town this week to promote his new Nazi drama “Valkyrie”, a district of Berlin has quietly posted a warning sign near the city's Scientology headquarters, explaining that local authorities mistrust the organization.
A public kiosk on the sidewalk in Charlottenburg bears a poster with a big STOP sign and a printed message: “The district of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf expresses its opposition to the activities of the Scientology sect in this district and in Berlin and hopes that responsible parties in Berlin will watch the Scientology sect with a critical eye in the near future, and hopes that any illegal activities will be made public."
Cruise is one of the world's most prominent Scientology members. Posters advertising his new film, about the 1944 attempt by Lt. Colonel Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg to assassinate Adolf Hitler, are plastered across the German capital.
Cruise said little about Scientology during his publicity tour through Berlin earlier this week, and the poster doesn't mention him. It only says that local officials see "a possible danger to democratic society in the increased activities of Scientology in this district."
The Scientology headquarters in Berlin opened in January 2007 amid national controversy.
The German government has never considered the US-based "Church of Scientology" a religion, it refuses to exempt it from taxes and spies on it regularly for "anti-constitutional activity" because of its aggressive recruitment practices.
During a failed attempt to ban Scientology in late 2007, German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble told the “Bild am Sonntag” newspaper, "fundamental basic and human rights like the dignity of man or the right to equal treatment are restricted or abrogated by the organization. It rejects the democratic system."
Sabine Weber, president of the Berlin chapter of the Church of Scientology, called Schäuble's remarks "unrealistic" and "absurd" at the time, and a government poster outside the chapter headquarters will increase the Scientologists' fear of government persecution.
Some lawmakers in Germany have said the government won't find enough evidence to ban Scientology, but acknowledge that its recruitment practices are "problematic" because, they say, it is more of a business than a religion and, once recruited, it recognizes that it can be difficult for members to leave.