Freedom Magazine Investigative Journalism
in the Public Interest

Introduction

Our perception of the world is increasingly influenced by a media kaleidoscope of fragmented facts, alarming anecdotes and sound bites—all packaged and presented along countless channels each day. It is a grossly distorted if colourful view.

The media’s role in fuelling prejudice, intolerance and even conflicts, is cause for much concern in human rights circles today. At the same time, the media’s vital role in shedding light on human rights abuses wherever they occur is a vital contribution to bringing about needed reforms in our society.

To fulfil its actual purpose, the media must support and uphold a free society—one informed by a free and honest press. For more than 36 years, the Churches of Scientology have advanced that purpose through a unique publication: Freedom Magazine.

Since the publication of the first Freedom edition in the United Kingdom in 1968, it has been an outlet for the voices that might otherwise never have been heard—human rights advocates and those seeking societal reform. Today, those voices are heard in 11 languages, through 22 different editions of Freedom—each with its own unique perspective and coverage. Common to each is Freedom’s clarion purpose: to advance human rights. That purpose is grounded in the Creed of the Church of Scientology, which declares:

“We of the Church believe ... That all men have inalienable rights to think freely, to talk freely, to write freely their own opinions, and to counter or utter or write upon the opinions of others....”

Beyond the Headlines: Advancing Humanitarian Solutions in a Troubled World

Freedom of thought and freedom of expression depend utterly upon the ability of individuals to exercise the right to know, think and judge for themselves.

Through the years, Freedom has pulled no punches in exposing what’s wrong in society and those who are responsible, yet it strives for balance, showing specific actions being done to bring honesty, peace, respect and sanity to the communities and countries of Earth. No matter how troubled the current scene may appear, how distrusted political bodies can become in the eyes of the public, or how bureaucratic and hypocritical government officials can sometimes act, Freedom makes one point despite it all: something can be done about it.

The words of the founder and chairperson of The Women Ambassadors Foundation, Dr. Marilyn Sephocle, reinforce the importance of Freedom’s mission: “Freedom Magazine’s accomplishments for human rights have been great because, through its investigative reporting, it has given a voice to the voiceless. The main influence on society of Freedom Magazine has been to realise and to bring to the forefront the fact that we are a pluralistic society and that we should live our lives according to that principle of pluralism....”

With all that has been said of Freedom’s investigative objectives and accomplishments, the most important factor is that, while it zeroes in on purveyors of human rights abuse and debunks false “treatments” that harm in the name of help, it also brings to the fore effective solutions to the social ills of greatest concern to leaders in any land.

Freedom spotlights highly effective and proven social betterment programmes—in areas of drug and criminal rehabilitation, education and morality—to provide decision makers with the ways and means to dramatically improve the quality of life for all.

“It was through Freedom that I found there were real solutions for drugs,” says Lt. Colonel Geza Gabriel, police chief in Retsag, Hungary.

“[Freedom] provides a new viewpoint on the drug problem and how to solve it. Your work in drug prevention is valuable and contributes to the work of the police force in our city.”

Reflecting current social trends, it is Freedom’s senior-most intention that voices speaking out on behalf of human rights and social betterment will continue to do so through its pages in the years ahead.

To the Core of Ethnic Cleansing

Freedom has educated officials, media, and the public on the psychiatric foundations of mass rape, mayhem and murder conducted in the name of “ethnic cleansing.”

Freedom conducted an on-the-scene investigation in the former Yugoslavia to determine the source of genocidal actions against the Croatian and Bosnian peoples, interviewing survivors in war-ravaged regions whose families and friends had been slaughtered or gang-raped. Beginning with extensive exposés published in European and United States editions in 1993, Freedom revealed how psychiatrists Radovan Karadzic and Jovan Raskovic masterminded ethnic cleansing—violence without parallel in Europe since the end of World War II.

Prior to NATO’s takeover of Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Karadzic’s escape to the remote southeastern Bosnia mountains (where he remains Europe’s most wanted war criminal), Freedom was among the first to call for his removal and subsequent indictment before an international tribunal.

Reporting in the Public Interest: A Clarion Call for Social Justice and Equality

In the 1970s, the apartheid regime of Balthazar Johannnes Vorster ruled South Africa with an iron hand and, despite international pressure, refused to grant basic rights to millions of people simply because of their race, denying their inherent equality.

During the height of that repression, a man selling windowpanes became lost in a desolate section of the Transvaal. Eventually finding his way to a mining compound, he sought directions back to the main road.

Imagine his bewilderment when a screaming, naked black woman raced from the compound’s administrative offices, chased by uniformed staff.

Later, the man brought word of what he had witnessed to the South African offices of Freedom Magazine in Johannesburg, which began an investigation.

Freedom learned that the mining compound was, in fact, a psychiatric facility—the Randfontein Sanatorium, housing some 1,500 black female “patients.” This was, however, but the tip of the iceberg.

Further digging by Freedom uncovered a network of privately owned, government-subsidised “mental institutions,” housing more than 11,000 blacks.

Exploited as a slave labour force by the private owners, the “mental patient” inmates lived under terrible conditions. Condemned to work in mines by their profit-minded masters, they were perpetually drugged and forced to sleep on mats on concrete floors in crowded dormitories, with lavatories that often consisted only of a trench in the middle of the room.

No medical facilities existed in the asylums, yet some inmates told of being taken to an outside institution and given electro-convulsive therapy, administered without anaesthetics—a brutal experience that can break bones, shatter vertebrae and cause death.

When the South African Freedom published reports exposing the brutality, the racist government reacted with fury, enacting measures that included a law making it a crime for news media to report on conditions in any psychiatric facility.

Refusing to be cowed by attempts to suppress the truth, Freedom took its information to the United Nations, which commissioned the World Health Organisation (WHO) to conduct its own probe. Its investigators concluded, “...the ‘sanitaria’ are in fact custodial institutions with very few discharges per year, and with poor standards of patient care.... [I]n a country which is amongst the richest in the world, the type and quality of mental health care are determined by the colour of the patient’s skin.”

WHO compared the misery and exploitation in the camps to “the ownership and trading of slaves.”

The American Psychiatric Association (APA) dispatched an investigative team to South Africa, which found a “high number of needless deaths among black patients” in the camps. Charles Pinderhughes, a member of that team, noted that discrimination against blacks in the compounds was “massive and general.” Pinderhughes commended the Church of Scientology and Freedom for bringing the camps to public attention.

Freedom continued its efforts to correct the abuses. Ultimately, a charter for the protection of patients’ rights in South Africa was created.

A decade after apartheid became history, appreciation for Freedom’s investigative reporting remains. “I think it is highly appropriate that I thank the Church of Scientology...for exposing the most horrendous practices of the apartheid system of mental treatment of people,” said Dr. Ben Ngubane, South Africa’s Minister of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology in November 2003. “The Church of Scientology became a real thorn in the side of the apartheid government. And, of course, it was for the better, for those who suffered from those conditions. So thank you very much.”