Church of Scientology
Human Rights Initiative
The Church of Scientology has since its inception been a champion of human rights. The Creed of the Church, written in 1954 by Scientology Founder L. Ron Hubbard, begins with the statement that Man is an immortal spiritual being and that all people of any race, color or creed are created with equal and inalienable rights.
In fulfillment of that ideal, decades of human rights advocacy and accomplishment by Scientologists have ensued, including exposing slave labor camps in apartheid-era Africa, spearheading Freedom of Information laws in the U.S. and other countries, establishing the Citizens Commission on Human Rights to clean up human rights violations in the field of mental healing, and publishing Freedom human rights journal since 1968.
“It is vital that all thinking men urge upon their governments (for the governments’ own sake if no other) sweeping reforms in the field of human rights,” stated Mr. Hubbard in 1969. To that end, today the Church sponsors the world’s largest non-governmental human rights information campaign, aimed at raising awareness and calling for governments to meaningfully support and ensure human rights.
The Church has made possible the distribution of millions of educational booklets, the creation of a series of 30 public service announcements depicting each article of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and production of The Story of Human Rights film.