The lack of division of power in unicultural societies
by SOTERIA INTERNATIONAL
The lack of de facto separation between the legislative, judicial and executive organs is generated also by their general dependence on the same cultural values which are perpetuated in a by nature dogmatic and conservative mass media.
Spiritual xenophobia is a well documented phenomenon in the OSCE participating countries.
In Romania yoga was prohibited during the Ceausescu regime as being a danger to the state and the Romanian culture. After 1989 Romanian politicians have continued to repeatedly make public statements about M.I.S.A, stating that it is not in line with Romanian morality and culture. According to transcripts published by media the social democratic party (PSD) when in power discuss the leader M.I.S.A as the “devil”.
The police forces’ internal video recordings from raids conducted 18th March 2005 towards 16 private collective homes are shown on TV the same evening, displaying innocent people half asleep half naked in humiliating positions enforced by the Special Forces conducting the raids. Private diaries and photographs taken during the raids are published in mass media only days later. Transcriptions of private telephone conversations bugged motivated by reason of national safety are appearing in media. In continuation this summer of 2007, the prosecutor’s indictments documents are published in media the same day they are given to the court.
The mass medial aggression, fuelled by close collaboration with politicians, police and prosecutors endangers the separation of power as it in the domestic culture creates a preconceived conviction. A country side police officer acting on his own initiative twice apprehends a young woman by the request of the woman’s mother and brings her to a psychiatric hospital. Second time she is forced into treatment of schizophrenia with heavy medicines. When asked about the grounds on which to act the police officer replies that “Every one knows that this yoga is dangerous. I did her a favour to bring her out of it.” A young judge working with reforms in the Ministry of Justice under former the Minister of Justice Macovei stated that methods and attitudes built up under the Ceausescu regime are so deeply rooted in the judges and prosecutors who were active in this period, that he does not believe in de facto changes before a change of generations. When the Supreme Court of Sweden in 2005 denies extraditing the leader of M.I.S.A to the Romanian authorities, it is motivated also in concern of the general hostile attitudes created by this close collaboration between state and mass media. The M.I.S.A case is not unique.
Here in Poland is an almost parallel case with a spiritual movement called The Himavanti Fraternity. In Scandinavia the publishing of caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed in Danish media raised the question of freedom of speech in relation to spiritual tolerance without any actual result.
In Sweden there is an ongoing debate regarding if non governmental schools run by organisations with a spiritual praxis different than the generally accepted should be allowed, even when they comply with the curriculum stated by the Swedish Ministry of Education.These and many other question questions can by their nature not be solved within a culture without foreign perspectives. Soteria recommend the establishment of a commission under the OSCE/ODIHR representing directly the diversity of authentic spiritual praxis followed in the OSCE participating countries.
Such a commission would as needed issue recommendations in the following areas:
– Recommendations to parliaments on legislative matters to secure the respect of non-domesticated spiritual praxis.
– Recommendations to the national organs regulating mass media in order to hinder campaigns and aggressions towards any specific spiritual praxis based in spiritual xenophobia.
– Recommendations on how to open the educational system in order to provide the pupils a tolerance towards lives based in different spiritual praxis.
Link to the conference document: http://www.osce.org/documents/odihr/2007/09/26774_en.pdf
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