[/quote][quote="Bloomfield]
The German Criminal Code containes the following provision:
You are right this is a prima facie unconstituional limitation of the right to express one's opinions.Anyone one who publicly or in an assembly condones, denies, trivializes a crime of [Genocide] that was commited under National-socialist rule in Germany, in such a manner that public peace is threatened, is punishable by imprisonment of up to five years or by fine. (Section 130 (1994))
When two constitionally-guaranteed rights or liberties are at odds, they must be balanced in such a manner that each is preserved to greatest extent possible. An example of this balancing between rights was a case in which a German politician sued to surpress a caricature of himself as a copulating pig with a human face. Such carricature was permissible, the Constituional Court ruled, because, even though the politician's (constitutionally guaranteed) personal dignity was affected, the freedom of political speech was so fundamental and so important to the democratic process that the opinion expressed in the carricature (strong disagreement with the politician's views) prevailed. Publishing such an insulting caricature of a private person would not be consitutionally protected (but would be libel or slander in the common law idiom).
In deciding whether the criminal statute prohibiting public denial of the holocaust was constitutional, the court balanced the right to express one's opinion with the personal dignity of German Jews (or more broadly, the victims of the holocaust). Denying the holocaust is viewed as violating the dignity of Jews. The German supreme court wrote:
This doesn't read very clearly in German, and worse in translation, I fear. The upshot of it though is that denying the holocaust is not something that happens in a vacuum: It means something very specific and horrible to the victims of the holocaust (and their descendants). It continues and perpetuates their de-humanization, the violation of the fundamental dignity as human beings. Human dignity is the very first thing mentioned in the German constitution and the most fundamental of all rights.The historical fact that people were segregated by the racial criteria of the so-called Nuremburg Laws, and were robbed of their individuality with the aim of extermination, grants the Jews living in the Federal Republic of Germany a special personal relationship to their fellow citizens; in this special relationship the past is still present today. It is part of their personal identity to be understood as members of a group of persons marked by their suffering [literally: fate], and vis-a-vis whom a special moral obligation exists that is part of their personal dignity. The respect for this identity is to each of them tantamount to one of the guarantees against the repetition of such discrimination, and it is a fundamental condition of life in Federal Republic of Germany. Anyone attempting to deny what happened is violating the dignity of each Jew living in Germany today, to which dignity the Jews are entitled. For those affected this means a continuation of the discrimination of the group to which he or she belongs, and of himself or herself.
Balancing the right of revisionists to express their opinion that the holocaust never occured against the fundamental dignity of the victims of the holocaust, the court decided that the victims' dignity prevails and that the state is permitted to prohibit publication of the Auschwitz-lie.
Source of the quotes: http://lexikon.idgr.de/a/a_u/auschwitzl ... zluege.php (in German)
Jim,
I quoted Bloomfields message to make clear that I am ONLY talking about our law, which seems to have proven that it can work for many decades now. This law and its intention (I presume in a similar wording only changed to work for our European partner countries) was the petition to be taken on for the European Union which got dismissed.
I tried to find a resource splitting the victims of the Nazi regime into groups which give a more personal information but could not find any so quickly. I was very interested to find the numbers of killed allies soldiers who gave their lifes to stop this inhumane regime. This is the estimations of killings during WWII I could find in a rush
55 Millionen Dead
35 Millionen Injured
3 Millionen Missing
By the dignity of these people and their relatives as said in our law, I strongly believe the followers of this ideology shall not have the right of free speach to help them to promote their ideals by using their pseudo-mythological signs and rituals and rethoric to be able to recrute a new generation of the willing.
I most certainly know of the risks to limit free speech (we have it pretty well protected here which I am happy about). I can only point again to what Bloomfield tried to make clear what we in Germany are on about with our law trying to stop Nazi-tum. I obviously cannot make myself clear enough in English, sorry for that.
Brigitte