Legal Commentary

More Punishment for Ethnically Offensive Speech in Europe

By Eugene Volokh

Expatica reports:

A Dutch appeals court on Thursday fined an Arab organisation in the Netherlands 2,500 euros [with 1,500 euros suspended] for causing ?unnecessary offence? in publishing a Holocaust-denying cartoon[, which depicts the Nazi Holocaust as a figment of Jewish imagination]....

?The suggestion that [the Holocaust] may have been contrived or exaggerated by victims is extraordinarily offensive for the victims and their surviving relatives, in this case the Jews[,? wrote the court.]

The Dutch leg of the Arab European League (AEL) re-published the cartoon on its website last year, saying it wanted to point out double standards in society.

It was reacting to a decision by Dutch prosecutors not to put far-right lawmaker Geert Wilders on trial for distributing controversial Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.

But appeals judges agreed with prosecutors that the cartoon was more offensive than could be justified by the debate...

Please let me know if you can point me to the court decision (whether in English or in Dutch), or to the cartoon. Thanks to Victor Steinbok for the pointer.

Full post as published by The Volokh Conspiracy on August 27, 2010 (boomark / email).