Jacob Mchangama and Aaron Rhodes: The Totalitarian EU
[Mr. Mchangama is director of legal affairs at the Danish think tank CEPOS and lectures international human rights law at the University of Copenhagen. Mr. Rhodes is an international human rights advocate and visiting lecturer at Helmut Schmidt University, Hamburg.]
The European Commission this week wisely rejected a proposal to criminalize the denial of Stalin's atrocities. This is a good occasion to re-examine the logic of banning any form of revisionism, including Holocaust denial.
In a letter to Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding, the foreign ministers of Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania and Romania wrote that "the denial of every international crime should be treated according to the same standards to prevent favorable conditions for the rehabilitation and rebirth of totalitarian ideologies." But the commission demurred, saying that when it comes to denying past totalitarian crimes, "one size does not fit all."
The proposal by the six former communist countries comes in the wake of a recent European Union decision obliging member states to criminalize the hateful condoning, trivialization and denial of certain internationally recognized crimes, among them the Holocaust. But the ban does not cover the crimes committed under communism, whose victims outnumber even those of Nazism. If the logic behind such laws is to prevent the resurgence of totalitarian regimes and to protect the dignity of the victims, it seems quite arbitrary if not perverse to omit communism...
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The European Commission this week wisely rejected a proposal to criminalize the denial of Stalin's atrocities. This is a good occasion to re-examine the logic of banning any form of revisionism, including Holocaust denial.
In a letter to Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding, the foreign ministers of Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania and Romania wrote that "the denial of every international crime should be treated according to the same standards to prevent favorable conditions for the rehabilitation and rebirth of totalitarian ideologies." But the commission demurred, saying that when it comes to denying past totalitarian crimes, "one size does not fit all."
The proposal by the six former communist countries comes in the wake of a recent European Union decision obliging member states to criminalize the hateful condoning, trivialization and denial of certain internationally recognized crimes, among them the Holocaust. But the ban does not cover the crimes committed under communism, whose victims outnumber even those of Nazism. If the logic behind such laws is to prevent the resurgence of totalitarian regimes and to protect the dignity of the victims, it seems quite arbitrary if not perverse to omit communism...