Revisionist and free speech activist Dr. Fredrick Töben has been
taken into custody to serve a three-month jail term for violating
Australia’s anti-free speech laws.
Australian Federal Police took Töben, the author of
Where Truth is
no Defence, I want to break free, from the Federal Court in Adelaide
after losing his appeal against his conviction for contempt of
court. Töben refused to be silenced in his struggle to correct
the historical record of the Holocaust on the
Adelaide Institute
website.
The judges said Töben also had a disregard for the orders of the
court and had acted to undermine the authority of the court.
The Full Court of the Federal Court also ruled that his jail term,
for what amounts to thoughtcrimes, was in no way excessive.
Earlier this year, Töben was found guilty on 24 counts of contempt
for ignoring court orders preventing him from publishing Holocaust
revisionist material. When he later imposed a three-month sentence,
Justice Bruce Lander said Töben had continued to breach those 2002
orders, which prevented him from publishing material which was
deemed anti-Semitic.
The 2002 orders stemmed from a racial discrimination case brought
against him by Jeremy Jones, former president of the Executive
Council of Australian Jewry.
Töben’s counsel David Perkins suggested that the revisionist
material published on the Adelaide Institute website, was just a
"drop in the bucket" compared to the amount of material questioning
the orthodox Holocaust story available on the internet.
The judges said in their verdict that the case before them was not
about the Holocaust, gas chambers or the execution of Jews during
World War II. They said it was about whether or not Töben had
complied with orders of the court. Those court orders however were
intended to silence Töben on these very issues.
"Obedience to the court is not optional," they said.
In a final example of the limits on free speech in Australia today
Töben asked if he could say something to the judges as the court
rose, only to be cut off by Justice Jeffrey Spender who simply said,
"No".
There are no guarantees of freedom of speech in Australia.
"Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime IS death."
George Orwell