We know that IHEU has member organisations in several parts of the world but does that mean that they are all similar? Of course not. In the May 2009 issue, we read how different various Humanist ceremonies can be, and yet how similar. It is exactly so with the work of our members. We all agree with the Amsterdam Declaration and the minimum statement.

In the film ‘Superstition Kills’, which premiered at the World Conference on Untouchability at London in June 2009, there were gory scenes of blood-spattered walls when a woman was hacked to death for being deemed a witch. None of her neighbours intervened while the horrible act was being carried out, and the killers still roam the village, free and unchecked.

The notions of astrology – be it Hindu astrology or that being practised in the west - are false as they have no basis in reality. Astrology has so far not been able to predict anything correctly: no astrologer in the world could predict clearly and accurately the September 2001 terror attacks on the US, or the recent terrorist attacks in Mumbai.

The world-wide reaction and publicity that followed the release of the award-winning documentary, Saving Africa’s Witch Children, has been a source of consternation to those whose activities were exposed by the film. This film demonstrated the scale of the problem caused by the continued labelling of children as witches in South Eastern Nigeria.

The worldwide problem of belief in witchcraft and the appalling human rights abuses to which it leads received a boost in September at the 12th session of the UN Human Rights Council held in Geneva, Switzerland.

Since 1999 several resolutions entitled “Combating Defamation of Religions” have been adopted by various United Nations bodies, including the UN Commission on Human Rights, the new UN Human Rights Council and, in 2007 and 2008, by the UN General Assembly itself. A similar resolution is likely to come up before the General Assembly at the end of 2009.

It was in 2007, at a meeting of the Council of Europe in San Marino, that I first had the opportunity to say to an audience that it might be able to do something about the fact that organised religion was a major threat to human rights.

One of my favourite films is the 1994 version of Balzac’s story Le Colonel Chabert. It begins with a haunting scene: we see a Napoleonic battlefield, after the battle. It is cold and misty and in all directions lie the bodies of the dead and wounded, while in the background we hear the eerie music from Beethoven’s Ghost Trio.

On The Wearing of Religious Clothes in Private Life

On the occasion of its National Congress, held in Savoie on August 24 – 26, 2009, the National Federation of Libre Pensee reiterated its principled position regarding institutional secularism and the respect for basic democratic liberties that safeguard the citizen’s private life in this country.

On January 20, 2009, newly elected President Barack Obama in his inaugural speech stated, “For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus and non-believers.” For the first time in history, millions of Humanists, atheists, and other freethinkers in the United States were acknowledged as Americans.