The Zundel affair:
national legal disgrace

What sort of truth is it that needs protection? — Auberon

Waugh.

PARDON ME if J glow a little, but it’s nice to have been
right in the Ernst Zundel affair.

trefer to the Supreme Court of
Canada decision that ditched a
stupid and dangerous law.

The court cast a blow for
freedom and delivered a bang in
the snout to the Jewish groups
that set this ‘‘faise news”
nonsense going; also to the politi-
cians who bowed to their demands
in laying charges.

Few come out of this miserable
affair with credit. Not a single
MP questioned the matter in
Parliament, and I saw only two
token editorials that took issue
with the wisdom of prosecuting
the man.

One was in the Toronto Star,
the other in the Globe & Mail.
And as I told you in 1988, Jewish
pressure achieved a virtual news
blackout on what was being said
in court in the second trial.

The whole affair bordered on
farce, Zundel’s “‘crimie”’ having
been that he distributed a pam-
phlet called Did Six Million Really

Doug
Collins

ON THE OTHER HAND

every day, politicians spread false
news. So do the media and
academe. Heck, I have even
spread some false news myself.
Nobady’s perfect.

44 The “spreading false news” law should
never have been dragged out of the
historical gunnysack. 99

Die? He didn't even write the
thing. But in jumped complainant
Sabina Citron of the Holocaust
Remembrance Seciety and we
were off on the false news far-
rago.

That was in 1984, an ap-
propriate year, and Zuadel was to
go through seven courts. His
lawyer, Doug Christie, estimates
that the cost to the public purse
has been at least $5 million.

in 1985, I gave evidence for the
” defence pecauss to me it seemed
absurd that anyone coufd be haul-
ed into court for such ridiculous
reasons.

The ‘‘spreading false news’’ law
should never have been dragged
gut of the historical gunnysack. It
_ was pure politics.

False news? Santa Claus spreads
false news, f told the court. So
does the weatherman. Today and

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_Suill, 1 am proud to have
spoken for common sense in one
of the most disgraceful prosecu-
tions in Canadian legal history.
But where were all those
yackety-yack members of the
freedom-loving media gang when
they were needed?

I shouldn’t ask. These days it is
much easier to bash the Pope than
to oppose the most powerful
pressure group in the country,

The man who coines out of this
with the greatest credit is Mr. -
Christie, who never gave up even
in the face of vilification. It takes
guts to keep going for years in an
unpopular issue of this sort.

Most lawyers would have
withdrawn. He mounted effective
challenges and even dared to tell

the Ontario Court of Appeal! that
the judge in the first trial was
biased.

As I wrote at the time, Judge
Hugh Locke's attitude to Christie
reminded me of Capt. Bligh bawl-
ing at Fletcher Christian in the
Mutiny on the Bounty movie.

But the lawyer had the last
laugh when the appeai court ac-
cepted his submission that the
judge had been wrong on !6
points of law. Hence the second
trial.

Political correctness having sat-
urated so much of our society, I
doubted that the Supreme Court
would rule in Zundel’s favor, and
in fact the decision turned on one
vote.

However, a speech given by Mr.
Justice John Sopinka last April
provided a straw in the wind.

*‘Certain segments of society
who are justifiably seeking equali-
ty for their particular interests
have extended their demands so
far that they threaten the freedom
of others,’’ he said.

“They not only criticize the ex-
pression of views that do not ac-

_cord with their own, but demand

that contrary views be suppress-
ed.””’

If freedom of speech has
received a bit of a fillip we owe it
not to Canadian liberals but to a
German who salutes the late
Adolf Hitler. =.

A pox on Hitler. But supporting
tyrants, fools and saints — and
spreading false news — is what
freedom of speech is all about.

Let us remember, too, that
there are plenty of people who
made a profession of spreading
false news on Joe Stalin's behalf.
Did anyone chase them into court
for denying there was a holocaust
in the Ukraine?

Jewish organizations are now
demanding that Zundel be charged
under the hate faws. But the
reason he was charged for ‘‘false
news’’ was that he couldn’t be got
under the hate laws.

And what about the Anglo-
Saxon rule of double jeopardy
under which a person must not be
tried twice for the same crime?

Eight years of prosecution-
persecution aren't enough for
some people.

Hatred is not confined.

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