The Washington Times

Published in Washington, D.C. -  December 11,1997 

Austrian Parliament puts faiths in limbo

By Larry Witham - THE WASHINGTON TIMES

The Austrian Parliament yesterday passed Western Europe's strictest law regarding religious minorities, designating a group of second class faiths that may gain legal status only after a 10- to 20-year period.

The two majority parties, that passed the Austrian law -- the Socialists and the conservative people's party -- said it gives groups such as Paptists, Adventists or Jehovah's Witnesses a path to public acceptance and social benefits.

In a more than five hours of debate, Austrian lawmakers backing the new law said it would clarify for the public and the courts the legal status of a growing number of "religious comunities" and beliefs.

But Austria's three smaller parties, along with religious liberty advocates and some U.S. officials, have criticized the law as restrictive. They say it is Western Europe's strongest step so far in a new trend curtailing religious minorties.

"It's a mania for registration and government control of minority groups," said Karen Lord, religious liberty counsel the Helsinki Commission, a human rights organisation.

Miss Lord said Russia and some East European nations already have adopted mechanisms to distribute social rights among religious groups based on their size, history or years of existence.

"The Austrian government has now passed a law with the same kinds of mechanisms," she said.

"The Seventh-day Adventists, with 10 000 members in Austria, have tried for 20 years to gain legal recognition, but now they face another decade of scrutiny in that attempt, its leaders said.

"People who are members of religious minorities in Europe now are more or less second-class citizens," said John Graz, a French national and Seventh-day adventist who leads the International Religious Liberty Association.

"The media attacks you, and you are viewed as suspect," he said of Europe's political mood. "Today you are designated as potentially dangerous."

The Austrian law states that official religions must have at least 16,000 members -- even though only four of the 12 official religions recognized by the 1945 constitution have that number. There are, for example, only 8,000 officially registered Jews, though perhaps twice that many in the Austrian population.

The official religions have tax exemption, statev funding, five minutes a week on government television, a religion teacher in state schools and a minister to consel soldiers of that faith.

Faiths seeking the second class-category of  'public corporation'  must have 300 members, the law stipulates. They mustr wait 10 years for possible approval if they had applied before the new law, and 20 years if they make a list application.

Though Austria is the first to pass a law on minority faiths, several European countries have established state-funded commissions to develop reports or lists of "dangerous sects." The lists include many faithsn widely accepted in America, such as Pentecostals, Witnesses, Baptists, Buddhists, Hasidic Jews and even the YWCA.

Critics of the anti-pluralist trend attribute it to an increasingly secular and statist outlook in European states, holstered by fear about religion, the work of  anti-sect  lawyers, psychiatrists and publishers, and the Solar Temple cult suicides and murders in 1994 and 1995.

Massimo Introvigne, an Italian expert on religious groups in Europe, said the European Parliament is debating messures to deal with "destructive sects," but is likely to be more lenient than Austria.

"Austria is a member of the European Union, and its approach in this law may be criticized by the European Parliament," he said.

The Jehovah's Witnesses, with 300 congregations and 34,000 members in Austria, have never gained legal status even though they have been active in the country since at least the 1920s.

This year, the Austrian court said the government must give the Witnesses a final aswer on their 15 years of applications. Leaders of the church believe the new law is "an end-run around the constitutional cort," said Donald T. Ridley, a church lawyer in its New York headquarters. "They don't call you a religion,' they call you a 'confessional community," Mr. Ridley said of the second class designation.

The new Austrian law is considered the strictest religious limitation in Western Europe, even more so than Greece, which does not monitor groups but outlaws proselytizing by any faith except the Greek Orthodox Church.