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Scientology exhibition at Post CS

7 January 2008 - At the spot where the El Hema exhibition was on show until last weekend, an exhibition entitled ‘Psychiatry, an Industry of Death’ will open on 14 February. The organiser, the Dutch Committee for Human Rights (NCRM), has connections with the Church of Scientology.

The press release speaks of “an impressive exhibition on the history of psychiatry and on today’s abuses”. The organisers thoughtfully warn that the exhibition is not suitable for children under the age of 12. The exhibition is based on a museum in Los Angeles bearing the same name.

According to a journalist, the LA museum tells about psychiatry’s “long-standing ‘master-plan’ for world domination” and Adolf Hitler’s central role in realising this plan, and holds “psychiatry to blame for the deaths of Ernest Hemingway, Del Shannon, Billie Holiday, Kurt Cobain, Spalding Gray, and just about every other entertainment celebrity who did not happen to die of strictly natural causes”.

In 2004, the NCRM held an exhibition entitled ‘Psychiatry Exposed’ at the Kwakoe Festival in Amsterdam Zuidoost. At the same festival, Surinam’s former president Johan Ferrier was presented with the Kwakoe Award. As a result of a double booking, the reception was held in the same tent where NCRM was holding its exhibition.

Het Parool commented: “It is a remarkable combination. Johan Ferrier, Surinamese shawl wrapped over his grey suit, sits on his chair with colourful panels in the background containing the not so common message of the Scientology branch: psychiatry is the cause of all evil. The holocaust, apartheid and ethnic cleansing in former Yugoslavia and Rwanda: all these horrors had their origin in psychiatry”.

Later that year, the same exhibition was to open at the Hague’s city hall, but was refused at the last minute because of the Scientology connection. After the organisation threatened to claim 500,000 euro in damages, the exhibition was accepted after all.

In 1997, there was a controversy over NCRM’s participation in a child welfare platform. The platform’s chairman Hans van der Wilk told Trouw: “The NCRM is not a forbidden or criminal organisation and as far as I know there are no organisational links with Scientology. The committee has always been loyal to the platform and during the preparatory phase it has never done anything wrong”. He said that it was not his task concern himself with the policies of affiliated organisations.

Image: modern shock therapy (Wired / Neuronetics)

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