Ernst Zundel sentenced to prison for 5 years for exercising free speech!
The German officials who have imprisoned a human being for speaking his political and historical opinions are the real criminals, not Ernst Zundel.
A court in Manheim, Germany has just decreed that sixty-seven year old Ernst Zundel must be imprisoned for 5 years for peacefully exercising free speech. Zundel, a soft-spoken pacifist who has always condemned violence, dared to offer opinions on the Holocaust forbidden by the German government. The Canadian Jewish Congress applauded the conviction and sentence as have many Zionist groups around the world.
Zundel, a respected artist who lived peacefully in Canada and then in America with his American-citizen wife, Ingrid Rimland Zundel, was jailed in 2003 and deported back to Canada after Jewish groups pressured American immigration to get him out of the United States. Canada imprisoned him under an Orwellian-type of law that declared him a danger to public order. All this simply for writing books and articles that intellectually contested some of the war crime allegations against Germany. Zundel has never been associated with promotion of any kind of violence.
On the contrary, he has been the victim of numerous violent attacks against him. Jewish extremists actually boasted of physical attacks against him and claimed that they burned to the ground his home and art studio. Jewish extremists have even publicly solicited his murder numerous times, but none have been imprisoned or even charged for these clearly criminal acts.
Canada then deported their prisoner to Germany where he faced a long imprisonment before his trial commenced in 2006 and ended February 15, 2007.
Zundel has already been imprisoned for three years without being convicted of any crime for the allegation he simply expressed forbidden opinions. Now he may face five more years now that they have a conviction.
Zundel has only expressed an opinion. Agree or disagree, that act can never be a crime. Zundel has not committed a crime, but the German government has. By putting this elderly, peaceful man in prison for years because he expressed controversial opinions is a crime against the most basic of human rights.
Freedom of thought, conscience and expression is a cornerstone of human rights. It is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution Bill of Rights, in both the United Nations and European Union Declaration of Human Rights.
Germany has committed a criminal, illegal, unjust and cruel act of imprisonment of an elderly man that is not guilty of any crime but who has relied on the principle of freedom of speech which Germany and many other nations say is sacred but then deny. Germany’s imprisonment of this dissident is a disgrace. Every nation and every political leader who believes in human freedom should protest this archaic, despicable act.
Concurrent with the Zundel trial, the German government has imprisoned another non-violent intellectual, chemist Gemar Rudolf on the same thought-crime charges for which he faces five years imprisonment if found guilty.
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