Mark Mardell: Denying war crimes
[Mr. Mardell is the BBC's Europe editor.]
The Germans, who are the current holders of the EU presidency, are very keen to bring in a Europe-wide law making it an imprisonable offence to deny genocide or war crimes. So, it would become a crime to deny the fact of the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide or the Yugoslav war crimes. Or would it?
On first reading, it is clear enough: the proposed law says "publicly condoning, denying or grossly trivialising crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes" must be punished. But there is a "but". A key clause says that a crime is only committed if there is a threat to public order. The British government hopes to use this to avoid bringing in a new law.
Diplomats argue that Britain's tough rules against crimes motivated by racial hatred would cover such offences.
One who will be celebrating is the man who was sentenced to three years in prison by an Austrian court for genocide-denial.
Historian David Irving now thinks he might have been wrong about the Holocaust, but told me: "Germany... is trying to dictate terms but it's really a political tactic. It's what Germans call a Persilschein, which is a Persil certificate to prove that they are thinking decently now.
"And they can't do that at the expense of the other European nations and they can't do that at the expense of free speech. I will be the first person in this country to go out into the street and try to break the law. Because I think it's a silly law and silly laws need to be exposed as such."
Most Jewish organisations in the UK don't want a new law. A panel of lawyers and distinguished experts, which looked into the question of introducing a holocaust-denial law in the UK in 1999 agreed with the government line that what we had was enough.
But now the man who chaired the panel, the lawyer Anthony Julius, has had second thoughts.
Anthony Julius: Second thoughts about Holocaust-denial law
"Times have changed. At that time Holocaust denial was the plaything of cranks, impotent cranks. People who could represent no real threats to Jews or others," he tells me.
He goes on: "Since then, the president of Iran has made a series of potentially lethal interventions into global political life, both sponsoring Holocaust-denial and calling for the destruction of the state of Israel. Now that combination creates an entirely new set of circumstances - meaning that the German proposal should be taken very seriously. ...
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The Germans, who are the current holders of the EU presidency, are very keen to bring in a Europe-wide law making it an imprisonable offence to deny genocide or war crimes. So, it would become a crime to deny the fact of the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide or the Yugoslav war crimes. Or would it?
On first reading, it is clear enough: the proposed law says "publicly condoning, denying or grossly trivialising crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes" must be punished. But there is a "but". A key clause says that a crime is only committed if there is a threat to public order. The British government hopes to use this to avoid bringing in a new law.
Diplomats argue that Britain's tough rules against crimes motivated by racial hatred would cover such offences.
One who will be celebrating is the man who was sentenced to three years in prison by an Austrian court for genocide-denial.
Historian David Irving now thinks he might have been wrong about the Holocaust, but told me: "Germany... is trying to dictate terms but it's really a political tactic. It's what Germans call a Persilschein, which is a Persil certificate to prove that they are thinking decently now.
"And they can't do that at the expense of the other European nations and they can't do that at the expense of free speech. I will be the first person in this country to go out into the street and try to break the law. Because I think it's a silly law and silly laws need to be exposed as such."
Most Jewish organisations in the UK don't want a new law. A panel of lawyers and distinguished experts, which looked into the question of introducing a holocaust-denial law in the UK in 1999 agreed with the government line that what we had was enough.
But now the man who chaired the panel, the lawyer Anthony Julius, has had second thoughts.
Anthony Julius: Second thoughts about Holocaust-denial law
"Times have changed. At that time Holocaust denial was the plaything of cranks, impotent cranks. People who could represent no real threats to Jews or others," he tells me.
He goes on: "Since then, the president of Iran has made a series of potentially lethal interventions into global political life, both sponsoring Holocaust-denial and calling for the destruction of the state of Israel. Now that combination creates an entirely new set of circumstances - meaning that the German proposal should be taken very seriously. ...