by Karolina Maria Kotkowska*

*A paper presented at the international webinar Media as Friends and Foes of FoRBand the Tai Ji Men Case, co-organized by CESNUR and Human Rights Without Frontiers on May 8, 2024, after World Press Freedom Day (May 3).

The topic of the relationships between new religious movements and the press, and more broadly the media, is a difficult one. On the one hand, it is obvious to everyone that the media should be free, and this is one of the aspects of the necessary freedom of speech in democratic countries. It is hard to imagine a free and pluralistic society without the possibility of expressing opinions, free circulation of thoughts, and also unrestricted access to reliable information.

On the other hand, as researchers of new religious movements, we continually encounter stories where the media have been used to strip vulnerable people of their freedom. Such actions often led to violence, including physical violence, and served as a tool to generate societal phobia towards new religions. The media were employed to construct negative narratives, resulting in police raids, sometimes even involving military personnel or special forces, against individuals without any weapons or criminal background, which were nonetheless presented as an appropriate means of dealing with cults.

Violation of basic human rights using the media is unfortunately a history we know all too well. Not only in the case of individuals and groups, but through entire years of obsession engulfing some countries or regions. And we are not talking about witch hunts, although undoubtedly the mechanism of creating a sense of threat is similar and the comparison is not entirely inadequate.

If we delve even deeper into the history of religions, the period of the formation of monotheisms, the coexistence of numerous competing heterodox groups at various stages of formation, then it will turn out that similar mechanisms were used centuries ago against various religious opponents. Times have changed, social contexts have changed, access to information has changed. One thing has not changedit is still easy to play on fears. It is one thing to provide accurate information about real threats, and another thing to deliberately arouse unjustified fear of threats from an imagined enemy.

Of course, one of the fears that is easiest to exploit nowadays is terrorism, which operates in such a way that a small, inconspicuous group of people can cause a great deal of harm to the entire society. It is not difficult to portray a group of individuals as radicals supposedly ready for anything. Stories like these have been happening for years. One can mention, for example, media attacks and tax police intervention against the Damanhur group operating in the Italian Alps, police raids against MISAthe Movement for Spiritual Integration into the Absolute established in Romania and operating in various countries, or recently also the attacks on an Argentine-based movement, the Buenos Aires Yoga School.

In one of my earlier Tai Ji Men webinars, at the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, I mentioned how various images of refugees were portrayed in the Polish media. On one hand, there was no doubt that immediate assistance should be provided to Ukrainian refugees, of whom about a million were eventually accepted, while at the same time, in the forests on the Polish-Belarusian border, victims of the war in Afghanistan, including small children, were dying. These individuals became part of a political game and media frenzy, frightening the public with the threat of Islamic terrorists invading the country. Many documents were created in the wake of those events, as well as a feature film, Green Border, directed by Agnieszka Holland.

This spring, with a group of researchers of new religiosity, we had on opportunity to visit the headquarters of one of the Islam-based new religious movements advocating for freedom and inclusivity: the Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light, located in England. The example of experiences within this movement shows how media can play a positive role. During an attempt to legally cross the Turkish-Bulgarian border, the group was attacked for unclear reasons on the Turkish side. It was only thanks to technology enabling satellite data transmission that the documentation of this event and the entire violence during the incident could be recorded and transmitteddocumentation that would otherwise have been stopped or destroyed by the authorities committing these acts. Such materials, evidencing the violation of human rights of followers, managed to reach other media outlets and serve as evidence to initiate legal proceedings to assert their rights and protect members.

And today we will hear the testimonies of the dizi (disciples) of Tai Ji Men. The oldest of them were there when the Tai Ji Men case started in 1996. They suffered because of a politically motivated persecution, and the unjust arrest of their leaders, but perhaps they suffered even more because of media slander. Hundreds of articled depicting Tai Ji Men as a cult defrauding its victims, evading taxes, and even raising goblins were published. All these accusations were eventually declared false by courts of law, but in the meantime Tai Ji Men dizi were discriminated in their workplaces, bullied in schools, and even insulted in the streets just for wearing their distinctive uniform.

History teaches us that the media can either be allies in the fight for freedom or pose a deadly threat to religious freedom. It all depends on whether they are independent or whether they transmit manipulated data, succumbing to political and other pressures. This means, however, that they themselves are not always free. Lets fight for media freedom, because only true independence of the media gives hope for communication that builds and strengthens freedom, rather than taking it away.

More here:

Freedom of the Press as an Element of Freedom of Belief - Bitter Winter