Still Ramifications From Those Danish Cartoons

Remember those Danish cartoons that depicted the Prophet Mohammad as a terrorist that the Jylands-Posten newspaper in Denmark printed in September, 2005, eventually causing riots around the Moslem world and a few resulting deaths? Well, in the UK there were no riots but three people did try to stir up crowds with “bomb bomb” comments that brought up the question of just how far does free speech stretch in such situations.

A British judge has just ruled that such incitement goes beyond free speech and sentenced three men to jail for six years each for soliciting murder during demonstrations against the cartoons, and they also received concurrent three-year terms for inciting racial hatred. A fourth man was cleared on soliciting murder but jailed for four years for inciting racial hatred.

The judge explained, “No one is entitled to make perverted use of ideology to propagate destruction and death.”

The men were among 300 protestors who marched on the Danish embassy in February, 2006. Police recorded them yelling such slogans as “Bomb, bomb Denmark, Bomb, bomb USA.” Another yelled, “Bomb, bomb the UK”.

The attorney general was not amused. “Freedom of speech has to be exercised with restraint, and where it is abused in order to encourage murder and incite racial hatred it has to be combated.”

As Oliver Wendell Holmes, the renowned US Supreme Court Justice, pointed out many years ago, guaranteed freedom of speech doesn’t protect a person "falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic." Pity he didn’t have a chance to comment on offensive cartoons that caused riots. - July 24, 2007

Keywords:Jyllands-Posten,free speech

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