SUBJECT: OMNI ABDUCTEE OPPRESSION                            FILE: UFO3044




Reprinted from Omni Magazine: July 1993


                           ABDUCTEE OPPRESSION
                           ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 Harvard psychiatrist John Mack says UFO abductees should avoid debunkers like
the plague. "It's fine to study abductees and present a skeptical point of
view," Mack says. But those who criticize abductees can be vicious about it,
Mack believes -- so much so that their verbal attacks amount to abuse.

 In fact, Mack contends, UFO abductees are a legitimate minority group whose
rights are violated at every turn. Mack is so incensed over the treatment his
abductee/patients have received that he suggests they no longer come in contact
with debunkers at all.

 Putting debunkers on TV shows with abductees, according to Mack, "is like
interviewing Holocaust survivors along with skeptics who say the Holocaust
never occurred."

 Still, political scientist and minority-rights expert Opuku Agyeman of
Montclair State College in New Jersey hesitates to put abductees in the same
class as a legitimate minority. He says that just making people feel
uncomfortable for holding a particular view does not violate their rights; it's
an example of free speech.

 Abductees would be considered a bona fide minority, he states, only if their
views were called deplorable and unacceptable and if they were punished as a
result.

            Omni Mag. --- Paul McCarthy


       
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