The Danish-Swedish politician and debater Rasmus Paludan is appealing the court’s conviction of incitement to ethnic hatred to the Supreme Court. He tells Samnytt about it.
Paludan was sentenced in November last year to four months in prison for, in the words of the Malmö District Court, ‘slandering Islam’. The reason was, not least, that he publicly burned Qurans and expressed himself in a way that was interpreted as anti-Islamic.
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In October this year, the Skåne and Blekinge Court of Appeal overturned the district court’s blasphemy conviction and acquitted the 43-year-old debater completely for his statements about Islam.
‘It is therefore most natural to interpret the statements as criticism of religion’, the court of appeal wrote in its judgment, and noted that such criticism is not punishable.
Convicted for statements about Arabs and Africans
However, Rasmus Paludan was convicted for sarcastic statements he made about the intelligence and propensity for crime of Arabs and Africans during one of his demonstrations.
READ ALSO: The Court of Appeal overturns blasphemy conviction against Rasmus Paludan
‘It is clear that the statements have been clearly derogatory towards the specified groups and Rasmus Paludan has thus, through these statements, expressed contempt for ethnic groups and other such groups of persons with reference to creed as well as national and ethnic origin’, the court of appeal argued.
However, the penalty was limited to a suspended sentence and 50 day fines. In addition, he was ordered to pay 60,000 SEK of his own legal costs.
Invokes extensive freedom of speech
Now, Rasmus Paludan has appealed the court of appeal’s judgment to the Supreme Court through a law firm in Stockholm. He hopes that the Supreme Court will completely acquit him.
READ ALSO: Rasmus Paludan: There is a risk that Swedish police will shoot me
In his appeal, the 43-year-old points out, among other things, that the entire indictment is based on interpretations of what he meant during his speeches. This includes certain formulations that have been perceived as sarcastic.
Paludan also points out that his statements were made during a political demonstration in the context of an election campaign, when freedom of speech should be particularly extensive. This is according to previous Supreme Court decisions, based on judgments from the European Court of Human Rights.
Refers to the Åke Green case
Not least, the Danish-Swedish 43-year-old refers to the 20-year-old Åke Green case. The then 62-year-old Pentecostal pastor held a sermon in 2003 where he spoke about homosexuality, and argued that ‘sexual abnormalities are a deep cancerous tumor on the entire social body’.
READ ALSO: Paludan on population replacement in Scandinavia: ‘The establishment wants to silence it to death’
Green was sentenced to prison by the district court, but was later acquitted by both the court of appeal and the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court argued that a conviction against the Pentecostal pastor would violate the European Convention as there should be ‘the widest possible freedom of speech in political, religious, trade union, scientific and cultural matters’.
Now, Paludan hopes that the Supreme Court will grant him leave to appeal, and reach the same conclusion in his case as it did in the Åke Green case.
‘The court of appeal’s judgment raises, in my opinion, important fundamental questions about the extent of freedom of speech in political contexts and how courts should interpret ironic and satirical expressions’, Rasmus Paludan writes in a comment to Samnytt.
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