The well-meaning Free Speech crackdown

international | rights, freedoms and repression | other press Sunday April 22, 2007 15:51 by Cedar

Story from last week on the new EU Hate-Crime law

Removing editorial discussion - Editor
Last week, the EU Justice and Home Affairs Council agreed a new 'hate-crime' law, making it a criminal offence to incite hatred or violence against people or a group of people on a number of grounds, including race, gender etc. The new law had intended to make denial or 'trivialisation' of war crimes of the Holocaust an offence but as a compromise, if these things are debated without causing breaches of the public order, debate can be allowed.

It's a law with dangerous potential for abuse by state powers and raises questions over what is a 'Holocaust'? Is the Armenian genocide a 'Holocaust'? And how does one trivialise a war crime? If a comedian makes a joke about war crimes in Serbia and the audience reaction ends in a breach of the peace, does this make him criminally liable? Is this a 'well-meaning' attempt by social liberals to protect minorities while violating the right to free speech, or something more sinister?

The article, along with back-up links and some commentary is available here:

http://cedarlounge.wordpress.com/2007/04/20/the-well-me...down/