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_WORLD WATCH______________________________
________________Poland_______________
Policies on “sects” reconsidered
Minority churches raise complaints
The Polish government is reorganizing its campaign against new religious movements, after complaints of harassment from minority churches, the Keston News Service has revealed.
Krzysztof Wiktor, the head of Poland’s Inter-Ministerial Team for New Religious Movements, said, “State policy is undergoing important qualitative changes, which will enable us to avoid charges of violating religious freedom.” The reform was dismissed, however, as a “pretense” by a leader of the country’s small Adventist church, who accused officials of helping “suppress competition” to the predominant Catholic Church.
Wiktor said that new religious movements had been viewed as the “key problem” when his team was formed in 1997, but added that team members were no longer concerned with groups “merely offering an alternative religious outlook.” He acknowledged that “the sect phenomenon is too broad and multifaceted to be treated like other social pathologies.”
Poland’s Inter-Ministerial Team disclaimed in a June 2000 report that religious sects posed a “major threat to society,” but called on state institutions to begin training personnel in how to deal with the new religious groups. A Polish police spokesman, Pawel Biedziak, denied that law enforcers were acting under pressure from Catholic leaders, but confirmed that material from Catholic anti-sect groups had been used for instructing groups of officers from each Polish county.