From a Communist website:
On 31 October 2022, Tomáš Hübner, single judge of the Prague 7 District Court, sentenced Josef Skála, a well-known Marxist intellectual and former vice-president of the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSCM), together with Vladimír Kapal, and Juraj Václavík, all three indicted, to eight months’ imprisonment, under Article 405 of the Criminal Code of the Czech Republic, for having challenged the version attributing the Katyn massacre [...] to the Soviet leadership.
The first round of the appeal hearings started on Feb. 1. From a news item:
Judge Tomáš Hübner stopped Václavík after several tens of minutes. "We're not going to prove history here, because it's absolutely clear that the Soviet Union and its units did it," he said, adding that the same arguments as Václavík were repeatedly used by staunch Stalinists before Soviet politician Nikita Khrushchev revealed how the massacre really happened.
"If you want to explain to me for several hours that Katyn was committed by the Germans, you can, but I won't believe you," the judge added to the disapproving roar of the public in the courtroom.
(Nota bene: obviously, Khrushchev never revealed anything about the Katyn massacre.)
Here's the relevant article of the Czech Criminal code:
Section 405 - Denial, Impugnation, Approval and Justification of Genocide Whoever publicly denies, impugns, approves, or attempts to justify Nazi, Communist or any other genocide, or other crimes of the Nazis and Communists against humanity, shall be sentenced to imprisonment for six months to three years.
Several points:
1. Obviously, I'm against such laws.
2. These Commies are, naturally, falsifiers of history (just like their lying comrade Grover Furr). There's no historical doubt that the Soviet Union was responsible for the Katyn massacre. Denial of this fact is intellectually equal to Holocaust denial. The Katyn deniers have been unable to muster any credible evidence for their claims and have been unable to account for the two key issues: if the Germans did it, where did the Polish POWs in question remain from May 1940 to July 1941 (we know they were neither in the POW camps, contrary to the official Soviet claims, nor in the GULAG) and which German units exactly committed the crime (we know it wasn't the unit that the Soviets officially blamed)?
3. The shouts from the Communist websites are hypocritical when the decades-long Communist suppression of the truth about Katyn using the criminal codes as a cudgel (numerous people were imprisoned for disputing the Soviet claims) is not acknowledged by the same websites.
4. The Western Holocaust deniers usually accept the Soviet guilt for the Katyn massacre (thus showing their intellectual inconsistency, since Holocaust and Katyn denial methods are identical) and try to use it to discredit the Allied evidence of the Nazi crimes (of course, without success). They also love to claim that if some historical claim needs to be protected by law, then it's at least suspicious, if not outright false. This case puts them in a bind.
So much for the idiotic (and irrelevant) claim that only Holocaust denial is criminalized.
ReplyDeleteIn Portugal it's not only denial of Nazi or Communist crimes. Apology, denial or gross banalization of any crimes of genocide, war crimes or crimes against peace and humanity ("apologia, negação ou banalização grosseira de crimes de genocídio, guerra ou contra a paz e a humanidade") can get you into trouble with the Law under Article 240 of the Penal Code.
Where you guys been hiding the last 2 years or so ? I've missed your articles. I guess there ain't too much to post regarding HD anymore, but have you thought about debating with Islamists and Quranic apologists ? There's a bit of a 'scene' going on over at youtube where the 'accepted' Quranic version of the origins of Islam are being totally destroyed .
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure where your political leanings lie, and if you are 'of the left' I understand you wouldn't want to touch this subject with a barge-pole, but the more moderate among you may be interested. I wouldn't be surprised if you are all already well versed in the arguments involved though.
Also, why no articles on the 'special operation' (PMSL) in Ukraine .
I'm of the left and I wouldn't have any qualms criticizing the religious underpinnings of Islam - it's just not really related to this blog.
DeleteAs for Putin's neofascist war, maybe I'll publish an article comparing Bucha denial to Holocaust denial...
Delete1) That's good to hear, Sergey. Maybe your Russian background gives you an advantage over Western based liberals when it comes to criticising Islam, in the sense that you couldn't give a shit about any accusations of 'Islamophobia'
Delete2) Good to hear you are not a Putin supporter . When this war started I carried out some reading on Putin and the FSB /KGB etc. I was horrified at the level of corruption and basic lack of humanity emanating from these barbarians. The most shocking events being the 'Moscow apartment bombings' back in 1999. If he could do that to his own people, then what would he be capable of doing to others ? I hate the cunt.
Just to be clear, I almost want to see Putin share the fate of most of the Nuremberg accused ("almost" because I'm against death penalty even for the likes of Putin...), but I don't think the case for the apartment bombings in 1999 being the FSB deed is particularly strong.
DeleteI have on my shopping list the book co written by Alexander Litvinenko 'Blowing up Russia' which I believe presents evidence that the bombings were in fact the work of the FSB. Not sure if you have already read it, but I will wait until I have finished reading this before I take the next step in researching this topic.
DeleteI have already read the book 'From Russia with Blood' by Heidi Blake, who took part in the BuzzFeed investigation into Putin. What I read in there was convincing enough, but I feel i need more evidence to be certain.
Anyway, I'll leave you with this paragraph from Wiki (yes i know !) :
"Shortly after the bombings, the ex-Secretary of the Security Council of Russia Lieutenant General Alexander Lebed claimed that he is "almost certain" that the bombings were organized by the Russian government.[9] In 2002, Lebed died in a helicopter crash.[10] According to Lebed's associates, the crash was caused by an explosive device."
Looks like another one of those 'mysterious' deaths that miraculously keep occurring to Putin's critics !!
He said that in 99 and died in 02. It's a stretch to connect his death to his statement.
DeleteTo explain my thinking on this point, I'll try to formulate compactly why I don't think the case is proven (despite my almost-wish to see the neofascist dictator Putin hanging from a tree). There were 2 pieces of evidence. 1. The alleged prediction of the Volgodonsk explosion during a Duma hearing referring to a house explosion in Volgodonsk which Seleznyov read out three days before the terrorist attack. Turns out there was a small-scale explosion in Volgodonsk right before Seleznyov read the news in Duma, which explains the whole much more plausibly than the FSB somehow having prepared a statement for Duma mistakenly(???), which makes no sense to me. 2. The Ryazan incident. Certainly a suspicious case and the official explanation may not be wholly satisfactory, because possibly there was a layer of hexogen on the sugar and therefore the intent to "reveal" a "terrorist plot" (rather than pure exercise); OTOH the exercise thesis is not impossible, as there had been a similar (although smaller-scale) example of a dud bomb in Moscow (IIRC), specifically as an exercise.
(Also, the transcript of the closed hearings of the terrorist suspects was leaked and looked quite realistic.)
Again, this is compact and from memory, so I hope I haven't made crude mistakes, but I don't think that the alternatives are more improbable than the whole conspiracy angle.
The blog's name defines its remit, and anything not immediately parallel to the Holocaust or Holocaust denial just won't fit. That still leaves a lot that is adjacent, from Katyn denial to antisemitic misrepresentations of the Talmud. As for our decline in activity: the denier scene shrunk and we got busy with our various lives. I'm still updating the open-access sources page, since so much is being digitised and put online.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your response Nicholas. I was actually thinking more of you getting involved on other forums regarding Islam, and not necessarily on here.
DeleteGood to see you're still busy updating the open-access sources page though. You guys have put a lot of hard work into this over the years. Thank you.
Too much else to do, not interested.
Delete