Scientology's Concentration Camps

When one researches Scientology it is not long before an interesting but disturbing pattern is observed. Hubbard's policies on critics and their "slanderous attacks" focus around a belief that if one is accusing that church of something, that person is himself "reeking with crime," usually doing the very thing of which he is accusing Scientology.

Ironically, this is somewhat consistently reflected in Scientology's own modus operandi. Their own rationale can be turned right back around on them. For example, if they attempt to discredit a critic for having some sordid past or crime, then the question should be asked of the Scientologist, "Are you saying if a person, leader or organization has a history of criminal and abusive behavior, they shouldn't be listened to or followed?" A "Yes" answer would completely invalidate Scientology.

One attack image Scientology uses most frequently is a comparison of its critics with Nazism and its persecution of the Jews. Whenever this analogy is used, as it has been in Scientology's attacks on the German government's refusal to recognize it as a bona fide religion, Jewish leaders have consistently and vociferously responded to this comparison with disgust.

Scientology would do well not to make parallels to Nazism an issue (e.g. see <www.factnet.org> for lists of comparisons between Scientology and Nazism). One of the most disturbing parallels is Scientology's own maintenance of a concentration-camp-like operation which they call Rehabilitation Project Force (RPF). In describing this horrific aspect, the monumental Los Angeles Times investigative report on Scientology related that many former members gave very similar accounts of how their lives were wrecked as staff members of Scientology.

"In interviews and public records, former staffers have said they were alienated from society, stripped of familiar beliefs, punished for aberrant behavior, rewarded for conformity, and worked beyond exhaustion to meet ever escalating productivity quotas" (June 26, 1990, p. A16). If a member's productivity began to decline or especially if they are suspected of doing anything that would undermine Scientology, they could be subjected to time in RPF.

"RPF'ers as they are called, are separated from their family and friends for days, weeks, months or even longer. They cannot speak unless spoken to, they run wherever they go and they wear armbands to denote their lowly condition." They are expected to do very menial jobs and hard labor or whatever the management "deem necessary for redemption" (Ibid).

Respected sociologist, Stephen Kent, professor at the University of Alberta, recently presented a paper on the RPF at the academic Society for the Scientific Study of Religion.

In it he details and documents the creation, purpose and abuses of Scientology's RPF. Using internal Scientology documents such as "Sea Organization Flag Order 343B. 30 May, 1977," and others, Kent writes, "In considerable detail the RPF document laid out the framework of forcible confinement, physical and social maltreatment, intensive reindoctrination, and forced confessions that were (and are) central to the program's operation" (Brainwashing in Scientology's Rehabilitation Project Force, November 7, 1997).

There is even an RPF's RPF - a kind of second level RPF for people already in RPF thought to be deserving still greater punishment or "rehabilitation" than provided in the regular RPF. There are several testimonials recorded of people being chained or locked in a wire cage in one of RPF's RPF locations in Clearwater's Fort Harrison Hotel headquarters (Ibid.).

For others, a stay at the Fort Harrison headquarters has resulted in something far worse than physical and mental abuse. The ongoing civil case and possible criminal case against Scientology in the tragic death of Lisa McPherson was described in The Watchman Expositor, Vol. 14, No. 5. This has also been exposed and investigated on numerous television magazine programs, most recently CBS's Public Eye with Bryan Gumbel, January 7, 1998.

Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist Lucy Morgan has recently written an extensive story of how "seven other Scientologists in apparently sound health died suddenly after coming to Clearwater for training and counseling" (St. Petersburg Times, December 7, 1997, pp. 1, 8A). Several of these Scientologists died after using Scientology's regimen of vitamins and minerals in lieu of prescribed medicine. Another man was found dead in a bathtub "with water so hot that it burned his skin off" (Ibid).

Scientology officials have tried to escape the awful specter of this type of treatment at the RPF by comparing it, incredibly, to life in a monastery, or boot camp in the Marines, a time and place for complete concentration on implementing Scientology into one's life. But for any objective observer, the question must be raised: "How can an organization wanting to promote itself as a church in a civilized society, and receive government protection as such, be allowed to do so while it operates something akin to a forced labor or concentration-camp in that same country?"