The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has held that a French comedian’s freedom of speech was not breached by a conviction on foot of a performance directed at the Jewish community.
Comedian Dieudonné M'Bala M'Bala was convicted and fined for hate crimes following an anti-Semitic show in December 2008. He appealed this ruling to the ECtHR on the basis that it was contrary to his Article 10 right to freedom of expression. The Court ruled however that the French authorities were justified in their conviction, saying that it had “no doubt about the highly anti-Semitic content of the offending part of [the] show.”
During the offending show in Paris, M’Bala M’Bala had invited Robert Faurisson, an academic who has received a number of convictions in France for anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial, to join him on stage to receive a ‘prize’. The prize, which took the form of a three-branched candlestick with an apple on each branch, was awarded to him by an actor wearing a pair of striped pyjamas with a stitched-on yellow star bearing the word ’Jew’.
The ECtHR determined that even if the show was satirical or provocative, it did not fall within the protection of Article 10. It concluded instead that M’Bala M’Bala’s actions were “incompatible with the letter and spirit of the Convention.”
The ECtHR judgement comes amid an increasing tide of opposition to the comedian’s views. He has been banned from performing in public since January 2014, when a French administrative appeals court upheld ruling to this effect. The judgement was passed after a joke he made about a Jewish journalist being sent to a gas chamber caused public outrage.
This most recent ECtHR ruling on the topic of anti-Semitism is in stark contrast to its October ruling in the case of Perinçek v Switzerland. There, the Court held that to be criminally convicted for publicly denying the Armenian genocide was a breach of Article 10 freedom of expression.
Click here for the judgement in M'Bala M'Bala v France.
Click here for the recent Bulletin article on Perinçek v Switzerland.