Berlin seeks to bar Holocaust denial in EU

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Berlin seeks to bar Holocaust denial in EU

By Dan Bilefsky / Published: January 12, 2007

BERLIN: Germany wants to use its European Union presidency to push 
through legislation that would make denying the Holocaust punishable 
by stiff jail sentences in all 27 EU member states.

The country's justice minister, Brigitte Zypries, said Thursday night 
that Germany's commitment to combating racism and xenophobia — and 
keeping the memory of the Holocaust alive — was both an enduring 
historical obligation and a present-day political necessity.

"We have always said that it can't be the case that it should still 
be acceptable in Europe to say the Holocaust never existed and that 
six million Jews were never killed," she said. Under the German 
proposal, she said, those who deny the Nazi slaughter of Jews during 
World War II could face up to three years in prison.

Zypries said the proposal, which will be debated by the bloc's 
justice ministers in the next six months, would also seek to 
criminalize racist declarations that are an incitement to violence 
against a specific person or group. The aim, she said, was to 
harmonize national legal systems in their approach to combating 
racism and xenophobia.

Unifying hate crime rules in countries with vastly different legal 
cultures could prove difficult, analysts said. European leaders have 
been unanimous in condemning those who deny the Holocaust, and have 
sharply criticized the Iranian government for sponsoring a recent 
conference that cast doubt on it.

\But the question of whether to criminalize such acts has divided 
Europe between countries like Germany that view a common EU law as a 
moral imperative and other countries, like Britain, Italy and 
Denmark, that have resisted common rules as infringing on free speech 
and civil liberties.

Two years ago, Luxembourg tried to use its EU presidency to push 
through legislation to unify legal standards for Holocaust denial, 
but was blocked by Italy on the grounds that the legislation breached 
freedom of speech. At the time, several countries rejected attempts 
to ban Nazi symbols, which gained force after the release of photos 
of Prince Harry of Britain wearing a swastika armband at a costume 
party.

Zypries said she was confident Germany could now succeed in 
overcoming such resistance since Italy, under a left- of-center prime 
minister, Romano Prodi, had dropped its opposition. But she cautioned 
that the legislation would need to be sufficiently narrow in scope if 
it were to gain support.

The Luxembourg proposal, which Germany is studying with a view toward 
emulating it, states that racist declarations or Holocaust denial 
will not be prosecuted if they are expressed in a way that does not 
incite hatred against an individual or group of people.

Laws against denying the Holocaust already exist in Austria, Belgium, 
France, Germany and Spain. In a recent high-profile case, the British 
historian David Irving spent 13 months in jail in Austria for 
challenging the Holocaust before being released last month.

The debate about how to reconcile freedom of speech with the fight 
against racism gained added momentum recently when the French 
National Assembly passed a law making it a criminal offense to deny 
that the massacre of Armenians by Turks during World War I was a case 
of genocide. While the Armenian community applauded the law, Turkey 
accused France of restricting the freedom of expression and rewriting 
history for political ends.

The publication last year of Danish cartoons satirizing the Prophet 
Muhammad, which provoked fury in the Muslim world, has prompted some 
Muslims to accuse the EU of double standards in its fight against 
racism.

Abdullah Gul, the Turkish foreign minister, last March called on 
European nations to review laws to ensure they outlaw defamation of 
all religions. He told a meeting of EU foreign ministers that many 
Muslims believed European laws protected established Christian 
religions, and banned anti- Semitism, while doing nothing to defend 
Muslims who felt offended.

Emine Bozkurt, a Dutch socialist of Turkish descent, who is president 
of a European Parliament working group aimed at combating racism, 
said the scope of the German proposal should be expanded. But she 
acknowledged that this could prove difficult.

  "We have seen increasing xenophobia and racism in Europe, so the 
German proposal is a good idea," she said. "But member states have 
different legal cultures and different laws, and this is a difficult 
issue."