Lawrence Anthony is a humanitarian and an environmentalist whose work to end the abuses of apartheid in South Africa has been acknowledged by the new South African government, and by the International Association of Scientologists.
He worked to expose the fact that psychiatric institutions in South Africa were in fact slave labor camps, where blacks were warehoused and where psychiatric "treatments" such as ECT were used to punish and abuse inmates who refused to cooperate.
More recently Anthony was in the news for his actions to save the animals at the Bhagdad zoo.
As covered in an article on the subject:
"Scientologist Lawrence Anthony has spent the last decade convincing Zulu chiefs to put the endangered black rhino in game reserves and profit from tourism rather than from continuing slaughter of the native animal.
"In April 2003, the plight of the animals in Baghdad pulled Anthony from this work and his home in the bush of South Africa to war-torn Iraq just days after the battle for Baghdad.
"Overcoming every "can’t be done" to gain authorized entry into Iraq as a volunteer administrator for the Baghdad Zoo, Anthony enlisted a team of local Iraqis and, with the support of U.S. forces, rescued the zoo’s ravaged inhabitants, as well as rounded up animals from Hussein’s private zoos where animals were dead and dying. Then he turned his sights to the next task: providing the animals a 21st century permanent home that befits their dignity."
The full article can be read here: Scientologist Lawrence Anthony announces $1 million fund-raising campaign to modernize Baghdad Zoo into a 21st century habitat
