There is the ideal of free speech, and then there is reality: censorship, persecution, and prosecution of dissidents.
By Mark Weber ∙ May 15, 1999
Pedro Varela in the aftermath of the attack on the Europa bookstore, January 16, 1999. In a victory for free speech in Europe, a high court in Spain has suspended a lower court conviction of a Barcelona book dealer for distributing publications that dispute Holocaust extermination claims. On November 16, 1998, a Barcelona criminal court…
By Mark Weber ∙ March 15, 1999
Jürgen Rieger In October 1996 a German government agency “indexed” as “dangerous to youth” translations of two popular leaflets published by the Institute for Historical Review. Germany’s “Federal Review Agency for Literature Dangerous to Youth” (Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Schriften), acting at the request of the country’s Interior Ministry, “indexed” unauthorized Internet translations of “The Holocaust:…
By Mark Weber ∙ February 15, 1999
A Spanish court has sentenced Pedro Varela, a Barcelona book dealer, to five years imprisonment for incitement to racial hatred and for denying or justifying genocide. The sentence, handed down on November 16, 1998, is Spains first conviction for Holocaust denial. It is based on the countrys 1995 anti-genocide and anti-discrimination law, which effectively creates…
By Douglas Collins ∙ February 15, 1999
Doug Collins looks up from the North Shore News issue that reports on his November 1997 victory in a closely-watched “hate speech” case involving a column about “Schindler's List” he had written from the British Columbia paper. This photo is taken from the front cover of his new book, “Here We Go Again!” Doug Collins…
By Mark Weber ∙ October 1, 1998
An important association of Jewish legal experts is demanding new and more severe laws against Holocaust revisionism, reports a front-page article in the Athens News, June 28, 1998. A conference of International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists (IAJLJ), meeting in June in the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki, warned that “the international revisionist movement,…
By Mark Weber ∙ October 1, 1998
For many years Swiss law has prohibited discrimination on the basis of race or national origin, similar to provisions of the 1964 and 1968 federal “civil rights” laws in the United States. But Switzerland's new “anti-racism” law, which is a revision of Article (Section) 261 of the criminal code (Strafgesetzbuch), goes far beyond this. It…
By Mark Weber ∙ October 1, 1998
Auschwitz State Museum authorities have banned a British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) television team and British historian David Irving from visiting the site of the wartime German concentration camp. In a July 15 letter to Irving, Museum official Krystyna Oleksy wrote: “We must advise you that permission will not be given for you to have any…
By Jürgen Graf ∙ October 1, 1998
Prosecutor Threatens Defense Witness A court in Switzerland has punished 47-year-old teacher Jürgen Graf and 78-year-old retired engineer Gerhard Förster with fines and prison terms for writing or publishing allegedly anti-Jewish books. A district court in the northern Swiss town of Baden on July 21 sentenced Graf, a leading Holocaust revisionist, to 15 months imprisonment…
By Mark Weber ∙ October 1, 1998
Jürgen Graf and Gerhard Förster are by no means the first persons in Switzerland to be attacked or punished for their revisionist views. They certainly won't be the last. Indeed, it appears that during the past year Swiss authorities have been cracking down on dissidents with noticeably greater severity. In 1986 a teacher in Lausanne,…
By Mark Weber ∙ October 1, 1998
Since October 1997, German historian Udo Walendy has been serving a prison sentence for publishing dissident historical writings on the Holocaust issue. Two German courts have found him guilty of the crime of “popular incitement” for items that had appeared in several issues of the “Historical Facts” booklet series he edits and publishes. On May…
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