/PRNewswire/ - Today, the Church of Scientology International issued the following statement:

For close to three decades, Germany asserted democratic grounds to support monitoring, exclusion lists and bias directed at Scientologists.

The monitoring has now concluded, yet Germany never demonstrated the danger it cited to support those actions.

The problem extends past the simple failure of the effort.

It lies in the reality that other democratic countries had already demonstrated to Germany the standards required for religious liberty.

Throughout the democratic community, judicial bodies and administrations arrived at a determination Germany opposed:

Scientology qualifies as a religion.

Its followers deserve the same safeguards.

Bias against them contravenes the foundational ideals that democratic communities are meant to maintain.

In 1993, the United States provided complete religious acknowledgment to Scientology after one of the most thorough examinations ever performed on a religious group.

In 1997, Italy's highest court identified Scientology as a religion and dismissed attempts to penalize its activities.

In 2007, Spain's National Court confirmed Scientology's religious standing under European safeguards for freedom of belief.

In 2013, the United Kingdom Supreme Court described bias against Scientologists as illogical, discriminatory and unjust while accepting Scientology chapels as sites of religious worship.

In 2016, Belgian courts dismissed years of dramatic claims, fully cleared Scientology and criticized the process as based on prejudice and assumed guilt.

Throughout Europe, Latin America, Africa, Asia and other regions, governments and courts have identified Scientology as a religion deserving legal safeguards and religious liberty.

These outcomes were not mere procedural details. They represented democratic institutions upholding democratic norms.

They followed the principles of religious freedom. They reviewed evidence instead of propaganda. They accepted Scientology as the religion it represents.

Germany pursued a different path.

It sustained doubt. It endorsed bias. It permitted sect filters to extend across public and private sectors. It allowed religious ties themselves to serve as grounds for exclusion.

Scientologists missed job opportunities. Enterprises and experts were singled out. Families encountered stigma. Children met resistance due to their parents' beliefs.

All of this took place under an official account that claimed to safeguard democracy while withholding the religious liberty democracy is intended to ensure.

This is the inconsistency Germany now confronts.

The democratic community accepted Scientology.

Germany monitored it.

The democratic community offered protection.

Germany embedded exclusion in public affairs.

And after nearly thirty years, Germany concluded where democratic principle should have started: without any established danger.

Religious freedom is not a decoration of democracy. It serves as one of its measures.

Constitutional safeguards hold limited value when governments decline to extend them to those whose rights are involved.

The conclusion of monitoring does not remove the harm caused to Scientologists.

Nor does it mend the stigma built by years of official doubt.

Yet it does leave Germany confronting the history it produced.

Scientology is a religion. Scientologists deserve equal rights. And after thirty years of unsuccessful monitoring, Germany did not reveal issues with Scientology.

It revealed the extent to which it had separated itself from the democratic norms it professed to protect.

SOURCE Church of Scientology International