CCHR Loses Charity Status in NZ [pdf]

exscn.net ~ On 21 May 2010, CCHR/NZ (Scientology's front group: Citizens Commission on Human Rights, New Zealand) was denied charitable status by the Charities Commission in New Zealand.

54. The Applicant's barrister has also submitted that the Commission is "discriminating against CCHR and/or its founders, or organisers on the basis of their imputed opinions and on the basis of their religious views of ethical views". He notes that the Applicant has been linked to the Church of Scientology in the press and the Commission's decision to withhold charitable status from the Applicant has coincided with targeting of the Church in the media,

55. The Commission's decision is based on its assessment of the Applicant's specific purposes and activities against the essential requirements set out in the Charities Act and relevant case law. It is not based on the views held by people associated with the Applicant.

Charities Commission's determination
56. The finding of the Commission is that the Applicant has failed to meet an essential requirement for registration as a charitable entity in that the Applicant is not a society or institution established and maintained for exclusively charitable purposes, as required by section 13(1)(b)(i) of the Act.
For the above reasons, the Commission declines the Applicants applicatjon for registration as a charitabie entity.
Update: Copy of PDF also available on scribd.com (thanks anonymary)

CC Latest Newsletter:
An excerpt of Trevor Garrett's, chief executive, latest newsletter:

charities.govt.nz ~ "...In registering charities, the Commission has no discretion - if the applicant meets the requirements of the Act, they will be registered.
Under the Act, to be a registered charity an organisation must be established and maintained for charitable purposes, cannot be for the private profit of any individual or group, must have a name that complies with the Act and all its officers must be qualified to be officers under the Act.

Continued registration once registered is not a foregone conclusion. Once registered, charities must continue to meet the requirements of the Act, and the Commission through its monitoring and investigation function continues to assess an organisation's right to registration. If the Commission finds that a registered charity is no longer meeting the requirements of the Act, the Commission has the powers to deregister it.

Many of the deregistration and decline decisions that the Commission makes are in relation to charitable purpose. The legal definition of a charitable purpose can differ from what members of the public might consider to be “charitable”. "

More on CCHR by APA From 5/21/09 archived post here on ODIT:

'industry of death' quackery tied to church of scientology

MedPage Today: SAN FRANCISCO, -- Physicians gathering for the American Psychiatric Association annual meeting here were greeted with a noisy street protest by the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), an offshoot of the Church of Scientology.

From its earliest days in the 1950s, Scientologists have waged a campaign accusing the psychiatric profession of a range of abuses. Now conducted under the CCHR's banner, the campaign currently portrays psychiatry as an "industry of death." Demonstrations like the one at this year's meeting have become a fixture at the annual gatherings.

Below, MedPage Today video report: APA President Nada Stotland, M.D., explains:

I think to some degree we've noticed the media are getting less and less interested in listening to the allegations of Scientology, many of which are patently ridiculous, you know, that psychiatrists caused the Holocaust or things of that sort. And so it doesn't cause as much disruption as it had in years past when that was the first time we had people marching up and down.

There is no other medical specialty I know of that has its own particular,, dedicated hate group. And there is no other medical specialty in which people are already stigmatized and afraid as much as they are of psychiatry, so it's a very unfortunate conjunction of those two things.



Scientology conducts these protests and this war on psychiatry under a front group known as the Citizens Commission for Human Rights - not a human rights organization. This front group is famous for producing the propaganda film - "Psychiatry: Industry of Death". This film contains various false information about the science of psychiatry in which the scientologists blame psychiatrists for 9/11.

ThanX for the heads-up from WWP & exscn.net