ZGram - 5/21/2004 - "Canadian Human Rights Watch 'protects' writer of serial murder story with grant"

[zgrams at zgrams.zundelsite.org]

ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny:  Now more than ever!

May 21, 2004

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

Somewhere in our vast collection of books, there is a paperback 
describing the horrendous sexual murders committed in Ontario by one 
Paul Bernardo and his wife - or was it girlfriend? - Karla Homolka. 

As I remember the story, Homolka, in the thrall of her lover, agreed 
to and even participated in the preparation for the murder of her own 
teenage sister to satisfy the sadist in her life.  This crime, 
unsuspected and undetected for years, was followed by two other 
murders, maybe three - I am not sure,  I read this years ago.  The 
pair was caught and turned over to authorities when one of their 
intended victims got away and somehow led police to this grossly 
sexually deranged couple.  Both earned lifetime prison sentences when 
they should have earned the chair.

These gruesome murders took place very near the city where I lived in 
Ontario many years ago.  Maybe that's why the story stayed with me. 
I could identify the scenery, the streets, the towns - and the book's 
impact never really left me. 

It became very vivid once again more recently when I read, off and 
on, in various dissident publications and even in one or two 
mainstream dailies that Homolka, though in prison, was allowed to 
finish college, is allowed a TV in her cell and even the "luxury" of 
throwing lesbian prison parties, fancy lingerie and all.  I don't 
know if this is true - it sounds a bit exaggerated - but a comparison 
is being made these days by more than one writer about how this 
murderess is treated by the Canadian system, compared to how a 
Holocaust Denier and "security risk" is treated who is ostensibly 
endangering some 30 million Canadian with his pencil stubs.

I am not sure if the writer, who received the Human Rights Watch 
grant described below, is the one whose book I read.  Possibly.  I 
rather doubt it, though - I read that book some eight, ten years ago. 
Chances are it's a pulp rehash for thrill. 

Human Rights Watch is a non-profit outfit.  Do you suppose I could 
get them to live up to their implied duty embedded in their name and 
logo, pay a visit to my husband's current domicile in solitary, bring 
greetings from the outside, and ask someone in charge why Mr. 
Zundel's mail is  being arbitrarily withheld from him? 

Twice a week,  I try to send him, via FedEx (!), a big, fat stack of 
news, accumulated letters from his friends, photos from his family 
and neighbors. Several times I tried to send him address labels 
because he uses them as makeshift pencil stub holders to squeeze the 
last bit of life out of them, for even his pencils are rationed. 
Those labels never reach him - I guess it's against prison rules.  I 
have to use FedEx, because regular mail with my return address gets 
stolen, and FedEx traces their mail.  But international FedEx isn't 
cheap - I pay anywhere from $30 to $60 per mailing so that the parcel 
gets to him not only fast but safely - and there it sits, in 
someone's office - somebody who enjoys himself for doing this to 
Ernst.  This isn't the first time it happened. 

The story below shows, once more, where Canada has parked its human 
rights priorities - in coddling and protecting a writer on the topic 
of the worst of lurid sexual murder, yet punishing a pacifist in 
petty, shabby ways for speaking his truth as he sees it, has studied 
it for decades, and knows it in his bones.

[START]

From:  Paul Fromm
Director, Canadian Association for Free Expression
Box 332,
Rexdale, Ontario, M9W 5L3
Ph: 905-897-7221; FAX: 905-277-3914
May 12, 2004

BY FAX -- For Publication

The Editor, The Globe and Mail.

Dear Sir:

Writer Stephen Williams has been given a $5,000 grant by Human Rights 
Watch "to defray the legal cost of defending himself against criminal 
and civil litigation over two books he wrote about serial killers 
Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka." (Globe and Mail, "'Persecuted' in 
Canada, author wins rights grant"). Some people, naturally, are upset 
that Canada is lumped with such brutal censors as Myanmar, China, 
Peru and Sierra Leone.

The comparison looks good on Canada's hypocritical legal and 
political establishment. Certainly, we don't torture or execute 
dissident authors. We operate in a typically mushy and more 
restrained Canadian way. Yet, those whose views upset or annoy the 
powerful are every bit as much in peril in Canada as in some of the 
more obviously repressive states.

Bricklayer Brad Love, an inveterate letter writer and opponent of 
Canada's open door immigration policy, was sentenced to 18 months in 
prison last July for writing anti-immigration letters to MPs. The 
legal excuse was Canada's so-called "hate law."

Now in his 15th month of solitary confinement in the Metro West 
Detention Centre is Ernst Zundel. For years, he's published largely 
the writings of others reflecting his own view of World War II, 
seeking to deconstruct some of the anti-German bias. He's being held, 
never having been charged with any crime, as being a "terrorist" and 
danger to Canada's national security.

A well-known journalist for a rival paper who covered the far-right 
in Toronto in the 1990s and who is no admirer of Zundel, has declared 
the allegation of his being a threat to national security 
preposterous. Yet, Zundel languishes in prison, not for being a 
violent man, which he isn't, but for his published views.

Finally, late last month, the Canadian Senate passed an amendment to 
the "hate" law, making criticism of homosexuals that is considered 
'hate" to be a criminal offence. Some Christian pastors now fear that 
quoting Biblical scriptures on homosexuality might earn them up to 
two years in prison. Provincial human rights commissions have already 
fined Christians for using such texts.
The Human Rights Watch grant is a reminder to smug Canadians that our 
Charter guarantees of free speech exist more on paper than in reality.

[END]