From: European Office
Sent: Friday, November 10, 2006
Subject: Letter for all Regional & National Leaders and UPF Secretary Generals

REQUEST FOR EACH COUNTRY TO SEND OUT A PRESS RELEASE FOR GERMAN COURT VICTORY ON SCHENGEN MATTER

Dear Regional & National Leaders and UPF Secretary Generals,

Many greetings from London! By now you will have heard the joyous news of True Parents' great court victory in Germany today.

Rev Song would like all nations as far as possible to send out a press release so that each nation can benefit from this wonderful news.

Clearly, any such press release needs to be appropriate for the local circumstances and to be sent out by the particular organization you operate under locally with your own contact names and the name of your own spokesperson. The following release (500 words) which was used in Britain may or may not be appropriate to your circumstances. However, I am sending it in case you can use it or adapt it.

Please can you send me a copy of whatever you do send out. Also if you need help in drafting your own version please do not hesitate to contact me for my help.

I am sure that this very clear decision from Germany will make a very good impact in most nations.

Many thanks!

Sincerely,

MARK BRANN

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

GERMAN SUPREME COURT OVERTURNS ELEVEN YEAR BAN AGAINST REV. AND MRS. MOON

Rev. and Mrs. Sun Myung Moon, Founders of the Family Federation and the Universal Peace Federation today won a major victory in the German Supreme Court. The court overturned an eleven year long ban preventing the couple from entering Germany or any of the other 14 nations party to the Schengen Treaty which sets up a common immigration policy among them.

The case had aroused indignation around the world from international statesmen, human rights organizations and religious leaders amongst others. In 2001 then U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell had lodged an official protest about it with the German government and in June this year forty international statesmen had written an open letter to Chancellor Merkel calling for the ban to be lifted. It had also been the subject of litigation for the past eleven years.

The Supreme Court stated that it overruled the verdict by the lower court because it violated the German Constitution's provisions on Religious Liberty and the Right of Free Religious Practice. Lower courts had not thought that preventing Rev. and Mrs. Moon entering Germany to meet members of the religion and its supporters was a sufficient violation of religious freedom to warrant their intervention. The Supreme Court strongly disagreed. It said:

The (lower) court based its decision on evaluating genuinely religious concerns, belonging to the internal affairs of the plaintiff, which governmental institutions are not supposed to deal with. Concerning the question, what would be the significance of a personal encounter by the members of a religious community with their founder or spiritual leader, only the understanding of the community itself can be authoritative.

The government had tried to utilize the Schengen treaty (which is designed to protect national security) to prevent the development of the Moons' religion. Their lawyers had argued that the government's insistence that a visit would threaten national security was spurious. Agreeing with this, the Court said:

It has to be duly considered that in accordance with the Schengen Agreement the listing implies the existence of dangers for public security and order or national security. It is not obvious that a visit by the Moon Couple would entail such dangers that would justify the continuation of the listing of the Moon Couple.

Mr _____, National Director of the (Family Federation/ Universal Peace Federation) in _____ said today:

This German decision is just the latest sign that a radical global reappraisal of Rev. and Mrs. Moon's life and work is underway. A series of highest court decisions in Europe has vindicated them of the kind of baseless allegations that used to be bandied about in the tabloids. More and more the value of the work they are doing to uphold the family, bring reconciliation between religions and bring racial groups together and so much else is being understood and recognized.

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