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The hate speech trial of the Austrian housewife and anti-Islam activist Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff resumed at a Vienna courthouse on January 18, following a two-month break in the hearings. Sabaditsch-Wolff, who has been charged with incitement of hatred and denigrating religious teachings after giving a series of seminars about the dangers of radical Islam, faces a possible three year prison sentence. Her case, which is eerily similar to the one involving the Dutch politician Geert Wilders, reflects the growing use of lawfare, the malicious use of European courts to silence politically incorrect speech about Islam.
In Europe as a whole, the European Union recently issued a new law known as the Framework Decision on Combating Racism and Xenophobia. The edict requires the punishment of certain forms and expressions of racism and xenophobia by means of criminal law.
More specifically, the text establishes that the following conduct is punishable in all 27 member states of the European Union: Publicly inciting to violence or hatred, even by dissemination or distribution of tracts, pictures or other material, directed against a group of persons or a member of such a group defined by reference to race, colour, religion, descent or national or ethnic origin.
Free speech advocates worry that the vague and all-encompassing language of the new law will be used to silence critics of Islam in a Europe that lacks American-like First Amendment protections of free speech. In fact, another EU law called the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (see paragraph 52, subsection 1) actually gives non-elected bureaucrats in Brussels the right to prosecute European citizens for expressing the wrong opinions if it is in the interests of the European Union to do so.
Pajamas Media Free Speech on Trial in Austria … and Europe
Coming soon to the U.S.A.?