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Friday March 29, 1996
Britain
criticized for rejecting Holocaust denial
law BERNARD JOSEPHS London Jewish Chronicle LONDON
(JTA) -- British Home
Secretary Michael Howard has come
under fire from Jewish leaders for
declining to join his European Union
counterparts in declaring Holocaust denial
a criminal offense in each of their
countries. Howard's refusal last week at a E.U.
meeting in Brussels to seek a British law
against Holocaust denial brought a strong
response from the Jewish
Board of Deputies, which said in a
statement that it "deeply regretted" his
decision. Howard cited British freedom-of-speech
laws during the Brussels meeting, where
other E.U. countries said they feared that
Holocaust-deniers would use countries like
England as a base for spreading hate
literature to E.U. states that have banned
such activities. To counter those fears, Howard agreed
to a compromise E.U. resolution that each
of the organization's 15 member states
would seize racist literature published
with the clear intention of inciting
racial hatred. The Board
of Deputies, which represents
Britain's 300,000 Jews, said in its
statement that laws criminalizing
Holocaust denial were already on the books
in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany,
Spain, Switzerland and Lithuania. The Hungarian government was
considering such legislation
[they
subsequently refused to introduce
it] and the Dutch courts
had also ruled against Holocaust denial,
the statement added. "It is sad that Britain is isolated in
this way," said board president Eldred
Tabachnik, who also serves as
president of the European Jewish
Congress. Holocaust denial, he added, was a
matter of grave concern "not only for Jews
and other victims of Nazism, but for all
democratic forces determined that neo-Nazi
ideology should not be allowed to acquire
political legitimacy in Europe." -
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Arrest
and imprisonment of David Irving in
Austria
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Our
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anti-semitism
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June
22, 1992 the Austrian ambassador in
London writes to Board of Deputies of
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