Laws Against Unpopular Speech in France is OK w/Me!

bhkad · 02-08-08, 08:11 PM

Laws Against Unpopular Speech in France is OK w/Me!

Quote:

Last update - 18:40 08/02/2008
France's Le Pen gets suspended jail term for comments on Nazi occupation
By Reuters

A French court gave far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen a three-month suspended prison sentence on Friday and fined him 10,000 euros for saying that the Nazi occupation of France was "not particularly inhumane".

Le Pen was found guilty of "justification of war crimes" and "contesting crimes against humanity" in the trial which opened in December.

It centered around a comment Le Pen made in a 2005 interview with right-wing weekly magazine Rivarol, which angered the government, anti-racism organizations and Jewish groups.

The prosecution had requested that Le Pen be handed a five-month suspended sentence and fined 10,000 euros.

Le Pen has always denied any wrongdoing and did not attend the trial. His defense team argued that his remarks were not part of an interview but of a casual conversation.

"In France, at least, the German occupation was not particularly inhumane, although there were some blunders, inevitable in a country of 550,000 sq km," he was quoted as saying in the magazine.

During the Nazi German occupation of France from 1940 until 1944, about 76,000 Jews were deported. Only 2,500 returned.

In addition, thousands of civilians were shot for acts of resistance.

French anti-racism laws have made denying the Holocaust a crime, punishable by fines or imprisonment.

The court also fined the head of Rivarol magazine, Marie-Luce Wacquez 5,000 euros and ordered Jerome Bourbon, the journalist who wrote the interview, to pay 2,000 euros.

Le Pen, who stunned France in the 2002 presidential election when he finished second, suffered a crushing blow in last year's presidential ballot when he finished fourth with less than 11 percent backing -- his worst showing since the 1974 vote.

In June, his National Front party failed to win a single seat in legislative elections, meaning the loss of state funding that has forced Le Pen to put his party's Paris headquarters up for sale.

France's Le Pen gets suspended jail term for comments on Nazi occupation - Haaretz - Israel News

We have seen, on these very pages, how some people can use free expression to create a 'truth' which is so far removed from the real truth that the real truth must always be unassailable by those who would distort it for their own purposes.

Without this law in France, by now there could be the impression that the Holocaust never happened. And we see that is exactly what is being promoted by Ahmadinejad.

We know that is how the people of Palestine have come to believe in the 'rightness' of their cause, even though they are mistaken.

Bones · 02-10-08, 03:33 AM

Despite the fact that I disagree with what Mr. Le Pen stated, in my opinion, is it nothing more than free speech, and does certainly not warrant a prison sentence.

Tashah · 02-10-08, 06:47 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bones

Despite the fact that I disagree with what Mr. Le Pen stated, in my opinion, is it nothing more than free speech, and does certainly not warrant a prison sentence.

There is no such thing as a universal right to totally unfettered free speech. Every nation and organization enacts constraints on personal expression which best serve those entities, but not always their constituents.

If Mr. Le Pen went beyond legislated constraints, and the court stipulated that he did, then there is a concomitant consequence to pay. According to the article, the prison sentence penalty was suspended (not enforced).

jujuman13 · 02-13-08, 12:57 AM

Quoted from Tashah
(We know that is how the people of Palestine have come to believe in the 'rightness' of their cause, even though they are mistaken.)

Israeli's believe they have an inherent right to the land of Israel.
But did they also have the right to push Palestinians from their ancestral homes?

In my opinion Palestinians have the right to object to actions by the State of Israel against Palestinians.
Similarly Israelis have the right to object to the actions of the various governing bodies of both the Gaza and the West Bank territories towards Israel.

Thankfully I permitted to state my point of view, although I must admit I take the obvious risk that I may be barred from this site for doing just that.

I freely recognise that Israel wants nothing more than to be left alone, but until and unless the problems Israel has with the Palestinians are settled, Peace will never be attainable.