&host=www.rt.com&uri=/news/pressure-freedom-speech-europe/&via=1.1 8.254.9.149:80 (Footprint 4.8/FPMCP)&ua=CCBot/1.0 (+http://www.commoncrawl.org/bot.html))
Pressure on freedom of speech grows in Europe – journalist
Published: 03 September, 2010, 19:11
Edited: 05 September, 2010, 04:25
TAGS: Conflict, Scandal, Europe
An executive at the German Central Bank, Thilo Sarrazin, may be sacked following controversial comments he made.
The institution is pressuring the country's president to remove the board member for his disparaging remarks about Jews and Muslims.
In one of his comments, Mr. Sarrazin claimed that “Arabs are no good for anything other than picking fruit.”
Helle Merete Brix, Danish journalist and writer, says that, while it was a very harsh statement to make, “of course, he should be free to make such a statement.”
She stresses that in the US people are free to make harsh statements, whereas “Europe seems to be nervous about anything crossing the line.”
“The pressure on freedom of speech has sort of grown tremendously all over Europe,” the journalist told RT.
03.09.2010, 17:58
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03.09.2010, 20:58
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Sarrazin made some disparaging remarks about Muslims and Jews. Given Germany's history of 70 - 80 years ago, Germans are fairly sensitive about picking on particular racial or religious groups. It may not be illegal to have quite radical views but it it probably unwise to express such views when being interviewed as a representative of a state institution.
It`s again the pot calling the kettle black. Of all countries in Europe - Russia seems to have the widest selection of anti-free-speech laws. First the law against "insciting racial or religious hatered", now the law against historical revision of "well established" facts, plus all the demonstrations that are supposedly the right of russians but are either not permitted, or are permitted then suddenly cancelled, etc etc. (and I`m not talking about the gay "pride parade") Or how about the honey trap and the secretly gathered compromising information on political opponents? Or the arrest of political activists or even priests for speaking out against immigration? Russia is by its own laws reverting back into pre-perestroika communism. Not a communism in the financial sense, but in the sense of no free speech and swift "justice" administered by its police and other institutions. Democracy and true freedom may come to Russia after a new Minin and new Pozharski do their thing and get the imposters kicked out of the Kremlin. Otherwise it will remain a state-run pseudo-democratic circus with a new mask but same contents.