POLES RETHINK ANTI-SECT MOVES AFTER MINORITY CHURCH COMPLAINTS

WARSAW, (CWNews.com/Keston) - The Polish government is reorganizing its campaign against new religious movements after complaints of harassment from minority churches.

Krzysztof Wiktor, the head of Poland's Inter-Ministerial Team for New Religious Movements, after announcing plans to liquidate the existing team in favor of a new "Inter-Ministerial Team for Psycho-Manipulative Groups," said, "State policy is undergoing important qualitative changes, which will enable us to avoid charges of violating religious freedom." The reform was dismissed, however, as a "pretense" by a leader of the country's small Adventist church, who accused officials of helping "suppress competition" to the predominant Catholic Church.

Wiktor said that new religious movements had been viewed as the "key problem" when his team was formed in 1997, but added that team members were no longer concerned with groups "merely offering an alternative religiousness." He said, "An inter-ministerial team will still be needed, since the sect phenomenon is too broad and multifaceted to be treated like other social pathologies. But we are not interested in the cult activities of this or that church."

Poland's Inter-Ministerial Team denied in a June 2000 report that religious sects posed a "big threat to society," but called on state institutions to begin training personnel in how to deal with them. A Polish police spokesman, Pawel Biedziak, denied last November that law enforcers were acting under pressure from Catholic leaders, but confirmed that material from Catholic anti-sect groups had been used for instructing groups of officers from each Polish county.

Meanwhile, the secretary-general of Poland's 9000-member Adventist church, Andrzej Sicinski, testified that Catholic information centers had also given "sect training sessions" to school directors and teachers. Sicinski said dissolution of the existing Inter- Ministerial Team had been expected, adding that he doubted the new team would survive the expected collapse of Poland's center-right government after autumn 2001 elections.

"The new name and formula are clearly intended to enable Mr. Wiktor and his Team to remain in power a bit longer," said Sicinski, whose church is one of 15 recognized in Poland under their own special legislation. "But I think this is a pretense. The new team will work, like its predecessor, to suppress competition to the Catholic Church, using criteria which enable the sect label to be thrown at all non-Roman Catholics." Registered Christian minorities in Poland have frequently cited pressure from the Catholic Church, which nominally comprises at least 95 percent of the country's 39 million citizens.

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