FYI:Australian Jews win landmark race case.
Reuters News Agency
Tuesday, September 17 – Online Edition, Posted at 5:09 AM EST
Canberra — Australia's Jewish community won a landmark court case on Tuesday when a judge ruled a Web site that denied the Holocaust happened and vilified Jewish people was illegal under racial discrimination laws.
In the first Australian court decision on race hate and the Internet, Federal Court Justice Catherine Branson ordered Fredrick Toben to remove offensive material from his Adelaide Institute Web site within the next seven days.
The offending material denied the deaths of millions of Jews during the Nazi era and said Jewish people who were offended by, or challenged Holocaust denials were of limited intelligence.
"The court was satisfied..that the respondent...has published material on the World Wide Web which is reasonably likely, in all of the circumstances, to offend, insult, humiliate and intimidate Jewish Australians," Mr. Branson said in the court's judgment.
The court, sitting in Adelaide, also ordered Mr. Toben to issue a written apology to the president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, Jeremy Jones, who brought the legal action, and to pay the court's costs.
Mr. Toben, said on his Web site he would appeal the ruling.
A former school teacher, Mr. Toben was jailed in Germany in 1999 for seven months on charges of inciting hatred through pamphlets.
However, he was acquitted on charges of doing the same over the Internet after a court said the Web site was run on computers outside Germany and outside its jurisdiction.
The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, which first ordered Mr. Toben to remove the material from his site two years ago, said this was the first Australian court decision on race hate and the Internet.
"This case confirms that, at least for Australian sites, the Internet is subject to the same legal standards as other forms of communications such as print, TV and radio," acting Race Discrimination Commissioner William Jonas said in a statement.
Mr. Jonas said he was aware of other Australian Web sites that may breach the standards of the Racial Discrimination Act.
"Those who disseminate ideas based on racial superiority or hatred through the Internet in Australia need to take heed of this decision," he said. |
