Several news agencies have released publications about Atman – The International Federation of Yoga and Meditation, and we see the need to reiterate our point of view.
After one year of the abusive police actions in France against peaceful yogis, the investigation is ongoing, and thus, no official statement, let alone judgment, has been released.
Atman Federation has not received any official communication about any possible implications in the case.
Willy Fautré, Human Rights Without Frontiers, about the situation: “The French warrant leading to the raids in France in November 2023 and the international arrest warrant implemented in Georgia, as they were drafted, created prejudices and shaped the minds of all the actors involved in the investigation who obviously failed to consider the charges as nothing more than allegations.
Moreover, many journalists and media outlets wrongly perceived the accusations as solid facts, failing quite often to mention the absence of victims and the presumption of innocence of the suspects as the case is still being investigated and as we are still far from any court decision.”
The charges were of “human trafficking,” “forcible detention,” and “abuse of vulnerability” by an “organized gang.” And in this case, as in others, the brutal interventions of the investigative bodies took place after long periods of surveillance of the yoga movements, years in a row, according to the official statements of the prosecutors. Thus, in the raid in France, ignorance of the yoga practitioners’ activity and their lifestyle was excluded. Note also that, after nine months, all the women the French police claims were held in captivity and were “liberated” in November 2023 continue to testify they were not victims, but they went to France voluntarily and were happy to participate in spiritual activities that in some cases included sacred eroticism.
As Prof. Susan Palmer and other researchers have noted, what happened in France is a continuation of a long series of attacks against affiliate members of the Atman Federation and yoga teacher Gregorian Bivolaru by forces that regard any combination of eroticism and spirituality as intolerable. Unfortunately, the academics’ studies, although they have been published, have not yet counterbalanced what the media campaign has created for years: the image of the yoga school as a “sex cult” guilty of “brainwashing” and “sexual abuse.”
Nor did those legal decisions in Sweden, Romania, and other countries that affirmed the yogis’ and Gregorian Bivolaru’s innocence matter. The portrayal of the yoga movement was and remains a tool of discrimination and slander in the hands of the mass media, used as a springboard for unfounded legal accusations.
We are deeply concerned about the unsubstantiated attacks of the police and media against affiliate members of our Federation and their teachers and students. We refute any of these current absurd allegations that have been brought up with no evidence. We consider that basic human rights should be respected, and everybody should benefit from the presumption of innocence.
It is yet another episode of an ongoing witch-hunt, and this prejudiced campaign should raise a red flag for anyone who cares about freedom of belief. And for some people within our affiliate member schools, their very freedom is now threatened by these proceedings.
Atman – The International Federation of Yoga and Meditation is a non-profit organization that provides courses on various branches of yoga and spirituality. The Federation has several affiliate member schools worldwide, providing teaching materials and training for the teachers. All of its affiliate member schools are organized independently according to their local legislation, holding full responsibility for their decisions and activities.
The Atman Federation categorically condemns any kind of abuse. Atman Federation’s code of conduct is based upon core values intrinsic to the practice of yoga and applies also to all its affiliate members. From its conception in 2004, the Atman Federation is founded on moral and ethical principles (Yama and Niyama). These are also embedded in the courses taught at our affiliate member schools.
We are safeguarding the free and conscious choice and willpower with knowledge and discernment of any practitioner following the teachings of the Atman Federation. We respect and encourage the rights, dignity and privacy of all human beings regardless of age, ethnicity, gender, physical limitations or religious affiliations. We do not tolerate any sexualised attitudes or misconduct.
On the contrary, the Atman Federation advocates the re-educating and transforming of such sexualised inclinations, which unfortunately have become obsessive in today’s culture. We never have and never will condone any teachings of sexualised behaviour within the Atman Federation.
Instead, our teachings educate people on how to transform their sexual instincts into pure eroticism that is to be based on mutual love, profound respect and tenderness toward each other, and first and foremost, the conscious choice and consent before being intimate with each other.
It is necessary to repeat that the Atman Federation is not responsible and not accountable for the private life of the staff nor students and teachers of the affiliate member schools.
Thousands of people who come to the courses of the member schools of the Atman Federation, some for decades, constantly attest significant and excellent results they have attained in their health, well-being as well as astonishing personal transformations in their lives due to the esoteric yogic practices taught within the various affiliate member schools of Atman Federation, and not about trafficking, grooming, abuses, manipulations or brainwashing as given the impression by the media.
The way spiritual movements are attacked by both media and police has many parallels to other cases of human rights abuses, sadly reminding of totalitarian regimes. The repeated abuses against spiritual movements in the past were, besides being addressed in court, studied in depth by sociologists and experts who published books and articles revealing the fabricated cases hiding a political interest. Some of the member schools of the Atman Federation have won court trials, including the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, proving the violation of human rights.
We reserve the right to prosecute any media agency for any statements that act against British and/or international defamation laws. We invite any publisher to use our press release in its entirety or in lengthy quotes that do not distort the meaning of our statements.
We encourage any sincere investigative journalist to include in their research on the subject the abundant well-documented academic studies and articles that have been written and published by professors in religions and sociology as well as professional human rights lawyers from organisations such as CESNUR, FOB, CAP and Human Rights Without Frontiers (HRWF) both recently and within the last decades. Recent publications often include thorough research of the case in France and offer a much more nuanced perspective than the sources cited in the mass media.
Valuable source links for anyone who sincerely wants to understand this complex case: https://atmanyogafederation.org/experts-about-atman/
The Board of Atman Federation – The International Federation of Yoga and Meditation
9 December 2024