2007-01-14

The following letter was sent, in a Danish version, to the daily Ekstra Bladet around January 11, 2007, and a much edited copy of it was published on January 14

It has been reported, that the new German EU chairmanship will work for a prohibition against Holocaust-denial and Swastikas. The Danish government must do all that is in it's power to work against these medieval proposals. It must *never* be illegal to ask critical questions, not even to seemingly well documented historical events. If the evidence is strong enough, only fools will believe otherwise, and basic scientific principels must not be destroyed because of fools!

Regarind the Swastika, it is basically a matter of freedom of expression, but there are other - historical - reasons why it should not be prohibited. The Swastika of the Nazis was a variation of former symbols which have been used for milleniums by various cultures and religions, including the christianity, buddhism, hinduism and islam. It would be absurd to prohibit a symbol just because some organisation or ideology has used it during the course of history. It may be possible to prohibit their violent messages, but do not prohibit their symbols.

With the recent Muhammed Crisis in mind it must be totally clear, that Denmark can not support these attacks on the democratic and scientific tradition of Europe.