Germany: Sarcasm & security. A German web user was nearly jailed this month
for expressing an opinion about the 11 September attacks. Luckily the judge
ruled that he wasn't serious. What if he was serious? What if he wasn't
lucky? Index on Censorship on a major threat to German freedom of speech.
http://www.indexonline.org/news/20030107_germany.shtml
A deliberately sarcastic reply to an angry posting on a German website
discussion space landed one of the authors in court, where he narrowly
escaped a fine or jail for 'endorsement of criminality...'
So-called 'flame wars' - furious exchanges between contributors to the
discussion spaces of websites - are familiar occurrences across the internet.
But one such exchange on a German website last summer put one of the
contributors in court on January 8, to face a charge of 'endorsement of
criminality'.
Holger Voss was charged, he said, for comments about the 11 September
attacks that he maintained were only sarcastic and satirical. According to
BBC reports, the court found that readers would not know it was intended to
be satirical unless they read all through the note.
The judge in the town of Munster, north-west Germany, decided that Voss had
not intentionally meant to approve the attacks on the US. He had faced a
fine and a possible jail sentence had the judge decided otherwise.
"It's good news, but the fact that the case was brought before the court in
the first place represents a major threat to freedom of speech in Germany,"
said Index on Censorship web editor, Rohan Jayasekera.
"Holger Voss could have been jailed for simply expressing a view about a
crime that he had absolutely no connection with, a crime conducted in
another country entirely.
"Are we now to see a legal ban on any debate on subjects involving
organisations or individuals linked to any crime - if the judge decides
that the authors support the crime, whatever it was, wherever in the world
it took place?"
The saga began when the online magazine Telepolis published an article
about the killing of hundreds of Taleban prisoners under the eyes of US &
UK special forces in Qala-i-Jangi fort in Mazar i-Sharif, Afghanistan in 2001.
It drew an angry response from one reader. Using the nickname 'Engine of
Aggression', he rejected the view that the Taleban prisoners had rights
under the Geneva Conventions.
In a contribution to the website's discussion forum, he congratulated the
western forces who had "dared to grab the Evil at its root and eradicate it
from the face of the earth!"
In reply Voss, going under the name 'Holger V', hit back with a comment of
his own intended to turn Engine of Aggression's comment on its head.
Voss sarcastically offered own congratulations, not for the western forces,
but for the al-Qa'ida attackers of 11 September 2001.
His point was to show up Engine of Aggression's 'obnoxiousness'. He even
made it clear in his original message that he was making a sarcastic point.
But public prosecutors in Munster didn't see the point or get the joke.
Acting on an anonymous complaint, they charged Voss with a form of
incitement, endorsing criminality. To find him they demanded details of
Voss's web use from his internet service provider and from Heise Online,
host of the Telepolis website and its discussion forum, as is allowed under
post 11 September anti-terrorist laws.
Heise Online told the police that they thought Voss's comment was purely
intended to be satirical. "At that point the legal proceedings should have
been cancelled," Voss told the Stop1984 website in an interview, "since the
unbiased view of the Heise Online administrator was that they could tell
immediately that my posting was obviously a sarcastic exaggeration of the
original post made by Engine of Aggression".
Ironically Engine of Aggression escaped prosecution. He used an 'anonymous
re-mailer' system to disguise his identity from the internet service
provider and could not be traced by the prosecutors.
Comment on this article.
Links:
Stop1984 interview with Holger Voss.
Heisse online report on the row (in German)
About 'anonymous re-mailers'.
A report on IT surveillance in Germany.
The November 2001 massacre at Mazar, alleged to have taken place under the
eyes of western forces.
The August 1998 Taleban massacre of civilians at Mazar.
