{Originally posted to the author’s website, The Lid}
Europe’s human rights watchdog, the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) delivered a list of 23 demands to the government of Britain’s PM Theresa May in an attempt to get them to censor the media and thus threatening freedom of speech, one of the demands was that the British press must not report when terrorists are Muslim.
ECRI blamed a recent increase in hate crimes and racism in the UK on the ‘worrying examples of intolerance and hate speech in the newspapers, online and even among politicians.
The suggestions sent to Downing Street urging the UK Government to reform criminal law and freedom of the press and in a brutal criticism of the British press, the report recommends ministers ‘give more rigorous training’ to journalists.
Part of that “training” is that British media be barred from reporting the Muslim background of terrorists.
But UK ministers firmly rebutted the remarkable demands, telling the body: ‘The Government is committed to a free and open press and does not interfere with what the press does and does not publish, as long as the press abides by the law.’
ECRI claims the discussions about immigration had caused an increase in xenophobia.
The 83-page report states: ‘ECRI considers that, in light of the fact that Muslims are increasingly under the spotlight as a result of recent ISIS-related terrorist acts around the world, fuelling prejudice against Muslims shows a reckless disregard, not only for the dignity of the great majority of Muslims in the United Kingdom, but also for their safety.
‘In this context, it draws attention to a recent study by Teeside University suggesting that where the media stress the Muslim background of perpetrators of terrorist acts, and devote significant coverage to it, the violent backlash against Muslims is likely to be greater than in cases where the perpetrators’ motivation is downplayed or rejected in favour of alternative explanations.’
And it comes after multiple terror atrocities by Muslim extremists across Paris, Brussels, Munich and other German cities over the last year.
Over the same period, there have been no major terror attacks in Britain
Based on the fact that there have been multiple terrorist attacks by radical Islamist, there is not been an “increase in xenophobia” The definition of xenophobia is “intense or irrational dislike or fear of people from other countries.” When one considers the attacks on her neighbors, the fear in Great Britain is not irrational.
Let’s face it, It’s bad enough when big government from one’s own country is establishing too much control over people’s lives. It’s much worse when it’s an international panel of unelected bureaucrats. Thankfully Theresa May’s government told ECRI to go away answering the Commission’s demands with:
The Government is committed to a free and open press and does not interfere with what the press does and does not publish, as long as the press abides by the law.
And Ponder this. What if the order to control the media came from the UN Human Rights Commission instead of the European Commission against Racism? And what if the demand to control the media from the UN was sent to the U.S. instead of Britain? Who do you think would protect the media and the First Amendment, Donald Trump, or a statist/globalist like Hillary Clinton?