Monday, April 23, 2007

New EU Law Restricting Speech

It seems that the EU has passed a law saying that member states must make a crime out of genocide denial. But Muslim genocides (e.g. by Turkey against the Christian Armenians) are not counted as genocides, of course. So Muslims can deny their genocides all they like!

"Condoning or "grossly trivialising" genocide will become a crime punishable by up to three years in prison across Europe, although justice ministers failed to agree a specific ban on denying the Holocaust yesterday.

Germany used its presidency of the EU to push through the first Europe-wide race-hate laws, regarded by Berlin as an historic obligation in the 50th anniversary year of the union created to preserve peace and prosperity after the Second World War....

All 27 EU nations will be obliged to criminalise "publicly condoning, denying or grossly trivialising crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes" but the test for prosecution was set deliberately high to secure agreement in Luxembourg. Cases will succeed only where "the conduct is carried out in a manner likely to incite violence or hatred".

The definition of genocide will be that set at the Nuremberg trials and by the International Criminal Court, meaning that it will include Nazi crimes and those in Rwanda and Yugoslavia but not the Armenian genocide - a definition disputed by Turkey.

Poland, Slovenia and the Baltic states lobbied hard for - but failed to win - the inclusion of a crime of denying, condoning or trivialising atrocities committed in the name of Joseph Stalin in the new law....

Source