John Travolta flies own plane to Haiti, laden with supplies and Scientology 'healers'

Published on Tuesday 26 January 2010 21:50

MOVIE star John Travolta has flown his own jet airliner loaded with food aid and supplies into the Haitian capital, along with doctors and ministers from the controversial Church of Scientology.

The 55-year-old Pulp Fiction actor piloted his Boeing 707 from Florida laden with six tonnes of ready-to-eat military rations to help survivors of Haiti's devastating earthquake late on Monday. He also brought along "healers" who claim they can cure illness and injury by touching earthquake victims.

But doctors have warned that the techniques employed by the Scientologists will be of little help to earthquake survivors.

Since their arrival, members of the church have been offering touch therapy to badly injured earthquake survivors at the General Hospital in Port-au-Prince.

One American doctor remarked sarcastically: "I didn't know touching could heal gangrene."

Before Travolta left a packed Port-Au-Prince airport he told reporters: "We have the ability to actually help make a difference in the situation in Haiti, and I just can't see not using this plane to help."

On Saturday, one Scientologist healer from Paris who gave her name as Sylvie claimed that the controversial church's techniques were working. According to Sylvie, a process called "assist" helped patients with amputations and damaged nervous systems to feel parts of their body once again.

She said: "When you get a sudden shock to a part of your body the energy gets stuck, so we re- establish communication within the body by touching people through their clothes, and asking people to feel the touch."

At the time she was working on 22-year-old student Oscar Elweels, whose father rescued him from the basement of his school where he lay with a pillar on his leg for a day after the earthquake.

His right leg was amputated below the knee and his left leg was severely bruised and swollen.

"One hour ago he had no sensation in his left leg, so I explained the method to him, I touched him and after a while he said 'now I feel everything'," said Sylvie. "Otherwise they might have had to amputate his other leg."

Aid groups have been desperate to fly their own planes into the over-stressed airport. UN humanitarian spokeswoman Elisabeth Byrs said yesterday that at least 800 planes with relief items were on a waiting list at the airport, which can handle only about 130 flights a day because of limited plane parking space.

The death toll since the magnitude-seven quake has risen to well over 150,000, a Haitian minister said on Monday. Competition for tented accommodation has erupted into fights, a sign of the desperation felt by the hundreds of thousands of people without homes struggling for shelter in the wrecked capital.

SCIENTOLOGY

SCIENTOLOGY is a belief system created by science fiction author L Ron Hubbard in 1953.

Celebrity followers include John Travolta, Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, Kirstie Alley and Isaac Hayes.

Scientology teaches people are immortal spiritual beings, or "thetans", who have forgotten their true nature.

Counselling known as "auditing" involves followers reliving traumatic and damaging incidents from their past, using a device called an "E-meter".

It is also says other thetans can become attached to our bodies, having lost their way, and must be "cleared".

Scientology is recognised as a tax-exempt religion in the United States, but not in the UK, and has often been described as a cult.