Newsclips from Europe:
United Press International
UPI, November 10, 2000
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Belgium court uses anti-revisionist law
UPI, Fri 10 Nov 2000 A Belgian court has handed a right-wing activist a
suspended six-month sentence using for the first time a 1995 law that bans
revisionist history.
The 55th chamber of the Brussels court of summary jurisdiction Tuesday
handed David Vercruysse a six-month suspended sentence and fined him $863
and as part of the sentence The court published its judgment in two
national newspapers, Le Soir and De Standaard, for distributing a booklet
that said the Holocaust had been exaggerated.
The case was filed by the Center for Equal Chances and Opposition to
Racism, which in 1997 found a Brussels newsstand selling copies of Final
Conflict, a British neo-nazi work that had been distributed by Vercruysse.
The court studied the 1995 law as similar cases did not exist and because
Vercruysse used the freedom-of-speech defense.
"We have foreseen limitations to freedom of speech, more particularly when
combating opinions baneful to society," the presiding judge said. "We must
avoid Belgium becoming a refuge for revisionism."
The book questioned the genocide of Jews by the Nazis during the World War
II. Under the headline "Did Six Million Really Die?," Final Conflict asks
what the "fuss" is about.
" . . . It is illegal to ask this particular question. Now, before people
start screaming and fainting out in suburbia, let's get one thing straight:
Jews did die in those camps and those pictures, for the most part were
genuine . . . but where is the crime in seeking the truth? . . . Was it a
planned extermination, or were there just too many prisoners at a time when
Germany was being overrun by refugees fleeing the Red Army and carpet
bombed by the 'Allies'and with typhoid and cholera epidemies, was death on
a large scale unavoidable?"
The judge said the book minimized genocide perpetrated by the Nazis and
reflected hostility toward democracy. Vercruysse said he distributed the
magazines, but said he wasn't aware it was illegal to do so.
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'Mein Kampf' Publisher Sentenced
The Associated Press
PRAGUE, Czech Republic (AP) - The publisher of the first unabridged Czech
edition of Adolf Hitler's ``Mein Kampf'' received a three-year suspended
sentence Monday for promoting Nazism, Czech media reported.
Michal Zitko was also ordered to pay a $50,000 fine, the news agency CTK said.
It said he appealed the verdict.
``Mein Kampf'' was published in Czech in 1936 and again in 1993 after the fall
of communism. The 1993 edition, which was not a complete translation, included
anti-Nazi commentaries by former Czechoslovak Foreign Minister Jiri Hajek.
The edition put out by Zitko in March was the first complete Czech-language
edition of ``Mein Kampf'' without commentaries or disclaimers. The book -
100,000 copies were printed - sold well.
The publication drew immediate protests from the Czech Jewish Community,
anti-fascist associations and politicians.
Zitko was charged with promoting Nazism in June and police seized some 300
copies of the book at the distributor's office the same mont
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Laws On Incitement of Racial Hatred Also Apply to Internet
By Katja Gelinski
KARLSRUHE. In a decision with potentially far-reaching legal and political
consequences, the Federal Court of Justice ruled on Tuesday that German laws
against neo-Nazi propaganda can be applied abroad even when such material is
placed on the Internet by a non-German.
It ruled that German laws against denying the Holocaust and spreading
right-wing extremist propaganda were legally valid even when the material was
put on to the Internet in another country, and that German courts could file
charges for incitement to racist violence against Holocaust deniers who use
the Internet even when it is not certain that Internet users in Germany had
accessed their Web sites.
The court thereby rejected an appeal by Frederick Toben, 56, an Australian of
German descent, who had used his computer in Australia to make his own
"revisionist" articles available to Internet users. The texts described the
mass murder of 6 million Jews by Nazi Germany as an invention of "Jewish
circles."
The articles were accessible to anyone in the world who visited the Internet
address of an institute run by the defendant.
Mr. Toben was convicted last year by a German court for denying the killing of
Jews by the Nazis both on the Internet and in pamphlets distributed in
Germany, and a district court in Mannheim sentenced him to 10 months in prison
without probation.
But he was acquitted of the more serious charge of incitement to racial hatred
on the Internet because, the judges ruled, he had written and published the
Internet articles in Australia, thus making him exempt from German law.
The Mannheim judges said German law only applied to acts carried out in
Germany -- with the exception of certain crimes which did not include
incitement. The defendant had not committed the offences in Germany, nor was
there any evidence that anyone in Germany except the police had paid any
attention to his Internet publications. The mere fact that people in Germany
could have accessed the articles was not sufficient grounds for the
application of German law, the judges said.
The Federal Court of Justice, however, went a step further, saying German laws
against Nazi incitement also apply to material that foreigners "put on a
foreign server that is accessible to Internet users in Germany." The presiding
judge in the court's first criminal division said that, in his judgment, the
Internet articles had been intended "to cause a breach of the peace in
Germany."
He went on to say that it was irrelevant whether these articles had really
poisoned the social climate in Germany. Given Germany's history, the
legislators had rightly aimed at preventing the very possibility of such
incitement, he said.
December 12, 2000
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 2000
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German policeman to go on trial for making Nazi salute
SAARBRUECKEN, Germany, June 19 2001 (AFP) -
A German policeman will face trial for having made the Nazi salute and
quoted a 1942 speech of Adolf Hitler, a spokesman for the prosecutor's
office in the western city of Saarbruecken said Tuesday.
He said the 30-year-old policeman is accused of having carried out the
offenses at a private party in a restaurant.
The policeman is charged with illegal propaganda. German law is very
strict about racist offenses, particularly ones that inspire racial
hatred.
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http://thescotsman.co.uk/scotland.cfm?id=78567
Police question six-year-old
Tom Gordon
A SIX-year-old boy has been reported to the police for alleged racial
abuse against asylum seekers, it emerged yesterday.
He is believed to the be the youngest child in Scotland ever to be
questioned by police over racial harassment.
The child is one of four Glasgow boys under the age of ten to have been
made the subject of a report to the Childrens Panel.
It is claimed the group trapped two male refugees aged 18 and 22 in a
lift in a block of flats on Mitchellhill Road, Castlemilk last month and
taunted them about their colour and clothes.
Although the six-year-old is too young to face criminal charges, a boy
of eight and two nine-year-olds have been charged with a racial breach
of the peace.
Last night, the mother of one of the nine-year-olds charged said: "He
was brought to the door by two officers who read him his rights there in
front of us.
"The police were not nice about it at all."
It is understood the alleged incident took place three weeks ago, but
the boys were not charged until last week.
The 22-year-old man was returning to the flats with his cousin when both
were allegedly cornered.
He is now thought to have moved to London.
Mark Brown, spokesman for the Glasgow Campaign to Welcome
Refugees, said: "This is shocking.
"It is horrendous that children could be engaged in that sort of racist
activity."
Robina Qureshi of Positive Action in Housing added: "This is sad, but
these children are taking up what they see going on around them.
"Their parents have a responsibility and we would want the council to
take action against anyone carrying out any form of racial harassment."
Last week, it emerged Glasgow City Council was attempting to evict
Jean Brown, 42, and her children for anti-social behaviour against
asylum seekers and others in Sighthill.
Glasgow has so far accepted around 3,000 asylum seekers, with a
further 4,000 due to arrive under the Home Offices national dispersal
programme by the end of the year.