Top Rights Court Upholds Swiss Ban on UFO Group's Posters


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More than a decade after Swiss police barred a UFO religious group from putting up posters depicting aliens, Europe's top rights court ruled Friday the sect's free speech had not been violated.

Police in the Swiss canton of Neuchatel in 2001 banned the Raelian group, which claims aliens created life on earth, from putting up the posters.

The local ban came after other authorities in Switzerland had allowed the posters.

Neuchatel officials said the posters presented a public order threat because Raelians promote human cloning and "geniocracy," a system where leaders are picked according to their intelligence.

Additionally, a Swiss court found the Raelians had "theoretically" advocated pedophilia and incest, the European Court of Human Rights said in a statement Friday.

The group had also been the subject of criminal complaints about sexual practices involving children, the court said.

Swiss high courts affirmed the ban and Europe's top rights court in January 2011 upheld the decision.

The Raelians then appealed the Strasbourg-based court's decision, ultimately winning an appeal for the Grand Chamber to hear the case.

The 17-member chamber ruled Friday, nine to eight that the Raelians' freedom of expression was not violated.

"Authorities had not overstepped the broad margin of appreciation given to them in view of the non-political dimension of the poster campaign," the court said.

At a November hearing, a lawyer for the Raelians argued that cloning is not illegal. He said the religious movement had repeatedly condemned all acts of paedophilia and said it was contradictory to ban a poster when neither the sect nor the website were barred.

The court also noted the ban only applied to putting posters on public property, "allowing the association to use other means of expression."

The Geneva-based sect, which claims tens of thousands of members worldwide, was founded in 1976 by Claude Vorilhon, known as "Rael".

According to its constitution, the group aims to make the first contacts and establish good relations with extraterrestrials.

The poster in question was about one-meter (three feet) tall and across the top in big letters were the words: "The Message from Extraterrestrials", according to the court.

Underneath was the Raelians' web address, a French phone number and the phrase: "Science at last replaces religion."

The middle of the poster showed alien faces and a pyramid, together with a flying saucer and the Earth. :alien:

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So they took part in ethically questionable activities, believed stupid things, and lied to people. Sounds like a textbook religious cult to me. I guess you only get that freedom if you call him God though?

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I think that the Swiss banks should give back some of that Nazi looted gold that they still possess. Oh sorry ... wrong topic.

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So they took part in ethically questionable activities, believed stupid things, and lied to people. Sounds like a textbook religious cult to me. I guess you only get that freedom if you call him God though?

That list sounds more like every Western Government around today...always thought Cameron was a cult ;)

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Yeah those Western governments are terrible. Makes you want to go & live in a mad theocratical failed state run by deranged religious psychopathic zealot terrorists who believe that their poverty & lack of materialism are all down to a Zionist conspiracy of morally turpitudinous infidel Western governments, who only practise their own belief systems because they have turned from the truth of the holy zealots & need to be exterminated or converted by the sword & the gun because the true believers are morally superior in some unproven unspecified way & have to kill people in the name of some imaginary god doesn't it?

Maybe not.

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