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Professor Crump Stops Clowning About and Gets Serious About Human Rights

On Sunday the 11th December, during East Grinstead's Christmas shopping event - along with police officers, school pupils and local shoppers - and in between bringing smiles to lots of faces, Professor Crump signed a petition asking for the full implementation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) within the UK. This petition is being signed by people around the UK and then will be sent to the Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair.

This is all part of a global campaign called "Making Human Rights a Global Reality," to raise public awareness of human rights, promoted by the Church of Scientology® International's Human Rights Department in association with Youth for Human Rights International (YHRI).

Similar petitions were launched all around the world this past weekend, marking Human Rights Day on the 10th December. These petitions will then be sent to respective world leaders, urging the implementation of the UDHR to help counter ethnic, racial and religious conflicts, and other human rights violations.

Recent surveys showed that over 90% of those surveyed did not know of the existence of the UDHR. Yet this is the document that guarantees basic freedoms to all people. Signed into existence in 1948, this document has now been adopted by 191 countries. The UDHR came out of World War II and the Nazi Holocaust which killed tens of millions of people.

A Human Rights Handbook has also been released across the globe at each of the events; This Handbook contains simple lesson plans for teachers to educate their students on the 30 human rights laid out in the Universal Declaration. Along with this was a release of three human rights Public Service Announcements, each one taking up one article of the Universal Declaration. These PSAs use similar concepts to YHRI's theme song UNITED, a street-savvy emotionally impacting 5-minute human rights music video that has captured audiences young and old from the United States to Russia and Taiwan.

UNITED was filmed and directed by talented filmmaker, Taron Lexton, then 19-years-old. It has now won six national and international film festival awards including the prestigious New York Independent International "Grand Jury" award for best "Short Film," and has been screened to more than 40 million people.

Carina Wilson, Community Affairs Director at Saint Hill, said "We found that many people visiting our stand didn't know anything about human rights at all and wanted to find out. Others very much supported getting human rights implemented broadly due to the violations of these that exist today. We want to make this part of education in schools, as knowing one's human rights can only help to free the world of human rights abuses and the subsequent upsets."

Scientology's founder L. Ron Hubbard stated that "Human rights must be made a fact not an idealistic dream."

The Church of Scientology's UK Human Rights Director, Saint Hill based David Hodkin, who co-ordinated the launch of the campaign in the UK, said, "Every day there are human rights abuses, not just in some other country, but right here in the UK. This can be bullying and other forms of discrimination, child abuse, mistreatment of the elderly, and many more. Broad education on what human rights actually are will help to prevent these abuses or to stamp them out when they occur."