A statement by “Bitter Winter” editor at a closed-door session on freedom of religion or belief of the 2023 Parliament of the World’s Religions in Chicago.
by Massimo Introvigne
In several countries, laws against human trafficking are increasingly used or misused against religious organizations labeled as “cults.” Human trafficking is, of course, a severe problem, affecting thousands of women, men, and children who are traded for commercial sex or forced labor. Since victims of human trafficking are often terrorized by organized crime and others who traffic them, laws stipulate that their consent to being trafficked is irrelevant.
Fighting human trafficking is a necessary and praiseworthy police work. However, those who oppose groups they stigmatize as “cults” try to take advantage of anti-trafficking laws by claiming that “cults” also “traffic” their members by asking them to work without a salary or abusing them sexually.
A case in point—but not the only one—is Argentina, where a special prosecutorial office called PROTEX, influenced by local anti-cultists, has recently extended its activity to “cults,” claiming that they exploit their members for free work or sexual abuse. When members testify that they are happy to work as volunteers, or deny having been abused, PROTEX applies the principle that the consent expressed by victims of trafficking is by definition unbelievable and ignores their testimonies.
PROTEX, thus, has re-opened a case against a group called Buenos Aires Yoga School, which had already been found innocent of the charge that it allegedly induced some of its female members to prostitution in the year 2000. PROTEX uses for the same facts the new angle of trafficking, which allows it to ignore the fact that, without exception, all the women depicted by an apostate ex-member as prostitutes, some of whom are in their fifties or sixties, firmly deny they are involved in prostitution or are “victims of a cult.”
PROTEX, again cooperating with anti-cultists, has also resurrected the discredited theory of brainwashing to accuse of trafficking the Argentinian branch of the Australian movement Jesus Christians. In this case, a judge has dismissed the case with a decision that severely criticizes the methods and ideology of the anti-cultists. A few weeks ago, PROTEX has raided 38 centers of the respected international Evangelical NGO REMAR, claiming that the fact that both volunteers and those the group rehabilitates from drug addition and violence, work without a regular salary amounts, once again, to trafficking.
The cavalier use of the laws on trafficking is now appearing in other countries as well. It is a dangerous case of using statutes established for a different purpose to criminalize religious minorities and resurrect the dead horse of brainwashing theories. In the case of Argentina and PROTEX, it is urgent that those who praise the agency for its work against trafficking become aware of the fact that anti-trafficking laws are abused to violate freedom of religion or belief.
*Academic articles on the BAYS case:
By Susan Palmer: “From Cults to ‘Cobayes’: New Religions as ‘Guinea Pigs’ for Testing New Laws. The Case of the Buenos Aires Yoga School.”
By Massimo Introvigne: “The Great Cult Scare in Argentina and the Buenos Aires Yoga School.”
Human rights analysis of the PROTEX-Salum case by Willy Fautré, part 1 and part 2.
