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Long
History in Portugal
Jorge Martins with Joao
Henriques "Diferencial" Newspaper - 3rd April 1996
(*)
Church of Scientology
(CoS). A name pratically unknown to the majority of the
portuguese. And yet, thousands of people in Lisbon
[capital of Portugal],
have already been approached by this organization: it is
this same Church that has that habit of distributing,
near several subway stations, some panflets alleging,
quoting Einstein, that we only use "10% of our mental
potential". Using this tactic, Scientology
makes a first contact with the potential followers and
also tries to sell the cult sacred book, written by
Hubbard, "Dianetics - The Modern Science of Mental
Health". This book has a portuguese edition, by
"Europa-America" editors, and in some libraries of our
country we can find Church publications.
Riot in
the 70's
Scientology
was founded in 1954, in the United States, and about a
decade later started trying to expand to the Caribbean,
Europe and North Africa. Ronald Hubbard bought the
Apollo ship and, in the end of the 60's and beginning of
the 70's, visited several sea ports of countries going
through political or economic crisis, where he expected
to find suitable conditions to establish the Church. Portugal
was important at that time. In the Church's calendar for
1995 most of the photographs are from ports visited at
the beginning of the 70's: Setubal, Lisbon, Porto and
Funchal [all ports of portuguese cities; Funchal is the
capital of the portuguese island of Madeira, in the
Atlantic Ocean]. In this calendar is also stated that
Hubbard compiled a "historical series for the Maritime
Museum of Lisbon" and there is a mention to the
"remarkable portrait of Marcello Caetano" [the last
leader of our 50 year dictactorship]. On the cover, the
Tower of Bethlehem [Torre de Belem - Monument in
Lisbon]... William Robertson, Captain of the Apollo at
that time [founder of the Free Zone splinter group in
1982], revealed that in 1972 Hubbard rented a movie
theatre in Lisbon where all the crew attended the world
premiere of the movie "Butterflies are free", from
director Milton Katselas (a scientologist). There is
also another report, according to which Hubbard had
rented a theatre in Portugal,
about the same time, for the recording of an album of
his private band, the Apollo Stars.
When visiting sea ports (sometimes
very frequently), the ship always rose some suspicions
about his mysterious activity. But, the scientologists
always answered with the same story: they were training
executives in management techniques. At the 3rd October
1974, in Funchal, the Apollo Stars were scheduled to
appear in a concert. Once more, the boat story sounded
false and, in a political reunion of the MRPP [a
left-wing political party], the rumour was spread that
the boat was from the CIA (after the end of the
dictactorship the left-wing parties were fighting
against the interference of the United States in
internal affairs). An angry crowd decided to attack the
ship (with stones, sticks and other objects) and even
throwed to the water 2 motorcycles and 2 small cars
belonging to the crew. After the fight between
scientologists and local people (that, apparently,
lasted for more than one hour) the ship had to abandon
the port. There are strong indications that Hubbard was
aboard the Apollo at that time and this incident was the
end of his approaches to the countries of Europe and
North Africa.
Route of the Church
Scientology
installed permanently in Portugal
at the beginning of the 80's, being directed by spanish
people at that time. For several years, the CoS has
dedicated its time to approach people on the street,
inviting them to do a "personality test" and trying to
persuade them to enroll in one of its courses. The
Church has also used small publicity actions, like
newspaper ads our the above mentioned distribution of
panflets about Dianetics. The portuguese press has
dedicated some attention to the activities of this cult.
The weekly newspaper "Tal & Qual" described the saga
of Mafalda, who went to take a course in Denmark and ran
away, with the portuguese embassy financing her trip
back. In 1984, Victor Paulo worked at the Church for 3
months and left, disappointed with what he found there.
In an interview to the "Correio da Manha" newspaper,
Victor described the methods to "draw money", referred a
secret account as destiny of 70% of the money and
mentioned some alleged "brainwashing" practices where
the victims were sujected to cure sessions, staring for
1 or 2 hours at the eyes of the auditor. Victor Paulo
said that, after some sessions like these, people
"freaked out" and could be easily convinced to
participate in other courses, spending their money or
their family's. After abandoning the cult, Victor Paulo
alledgely received several anonymous threatening phone
calls...
At the beginning, the Church was
situated at Chiado [location in Lisbon]. Posteriorly,
the scientologists moved to Actor Taborda Street and, at
the 9th September 1995, the new facilities were opened,
at Conde Redondo Street, in Lisbon, with the presence of
the director for the Iberic Peninsula [name for the land
occupied by Portugal
and Spain], Antonia Navarro (who was arrested in Spain,
in 1988, because of a suit yet to go to trial).
According to an article of the "Diario de Noticias"
newspaper (10/09/95), the CoS now wants to open a local
org in Porto [portuguese city also known as Oporto]. At
the beginning of the 90's there was also the news of a
possible installation of a Narconon clinic in Viseu
[another portuguese city, not a big one; - Narconon is
the organization of the drug addicts rehabilitation
clinics of Scientology].
Conferences at the Technical
Superior Institute (IST)
In November 1994, the Scientology
rented an auditorium at the IST, through a young
assistant of the Mathematics Department (whose name we
prefer to omit) that takes Church courses. That
assistant convinced several of his freshman students
(and also other students, since he asked to speak in
other teacher's classes) to attend at one of the events
that would take place. In 2 consecutive saturdays, 12th
and 19th, two distinct conferences were held, under the
suject of "Study Methods". The price, symbolic, was 3000
escudos [about 20 american dollars] and 3 very simple
techniques were studied. According to some of the
participants, only some common sense techniques were
mentioned and some were even disappointed. At the end,
the participants were asked to fulfill a questionaire
with some personnal data and to give an opinion about
the conference they had just attended to. It was that
the time when some students discovered that the
organization of the event was the responsability of the
Church of Scientology.
They were also invited to participate in an advanced
course, at the Church facilities, that would cost about
15000 escudos [about 100 american dollars]. According to
our sources, some students accepted the offer and
participated in the advanced course.
Meanwhile, after the second
conference, the Student's Association got to know who
really was the organizer of the conferences and
discovered some irregularities in the renting process of
the auditorium (the assistant had rented the space for
the Maths Department), later corrected by the Church.
Also, some propaganda had been placed in the 'campus'
without authorization. Since then, the portuguese Scientology
Church never again tried to put up any activities at the
IST and the assistant had his case taken care internally
in the Maths Department, where he still works.
Violent deaths in Lisbon
Still in 1994, there was a serious
event related to Scientology.
At the 29th July, Joao Cancela, a 32 year-old
enterpriser, showed up with a gun at the Church's Lisbon
org, at Actor Tabord Street, and shot several times.
Maria do Rosario Almeida, an employee of the Finances
State Department and part-time worker at the Church was
deadly hit. A second person was also injured before the
attacker was stopped by Jose Jesus, another part-time
worker and employee of the Transports Company of Lisbon.
Joao Cancela was arrested and, according to the
"Independente" newspaper, he confessed to the judge his
intention to kill and his "intense antipathy to the
Church of Scientology
doctrine". After the detention, Cancela's phsicological
condition soon declined and he was transferred to the
Phsychiatric Hospital of Caxias [Prison Hospital], where
he committed suicide, hanging himself, at the 16th
August.
According to the investigation
conducted by the "Independente" the conclusion is that
Joao Cancela had, apparently, no previous relation with
Scientology,
and his motives were unknown. The efforts of our paper
did not lead us to collect new facts referring to this
case, seeming to confirm the version of the portuguese
director of Scientology,
that the man suffered from mental disorders. Filomena
Pereira, who agreed to discuss some topics with our
paper, claimed no knowledge on any obscure activities of
Scientology,
as well as on the judicial defeats in foreign countries,
and denied some accusations of critics towards the
Church. As a matter of fact, this director even
guarantees to the portuguese members of Scientology
that the Church never lost a single court case...
[ (*)Academic newspaper of the most
prestiged engineering school in Portugal.
The paper is generalist, totally free, edited by the
Student's Association of the Technical Superior
Institute (IST), in Lisbon. The paper comes out in 6000
copies and there is a version for the WWW (only in
portuguese, at the moment) at: http://alfa.ist.utl.pt/~difE-MAIL:
dif@alfa.ist.utl.pt
]
[ This is the second of 3 articles
about the Church of Scientology.
The story was covered because of the conferences that
were held in our Institute. Another article is about the
war in the Internet and the last one is about the
Church's doctrine and beliefs, the critics and the
situation worldwide. ]
[ Copyright 1996, by "Diferencial"
Newspaper. Permission for distributing, archiving,
copying, printing, etc, is granted as long as the
article is kept is this original from (including all
information in square brackets) and is not used for
commercial purposes.
] |
