In Germany, you can get up to 3 years in prison for burning another country’s flag, and they just added the Jewropean Union’s flag to that law, even though it’s not a country.
They started working on this law right after someone burned Israel’s flag in Berlin.
That’s the same punishment as you’d get for flag-burning in China. (Because the Chinks have no freedoms and stuff, they’ll only put you in prison for burning their flag, not someone else’s, or the flag of a trans-national economic bloc. True democracies respect Israel.)
Germany’s Bundestag has approved a new law imposing a prison sentence of up to three years for damaging or destroying a European Union flag, in an effort to curb “hate”.
The national parliament voted on Thursday to amend the criminal code to protect the European Union flag from being destroyed, damaged, or defaced. Punishments for contraventions of the law range from a fine or even a prison sentence of up to three years.
Nothing says freedoms quite like getting thrown in jail for having the wrong emotion.
The vote follows months of debate on the law, and a previous session in parliament on protecting the EU flag from physical expressions of criticism in January. Reporting at the time, Germany’s Deutsche Welle noted strong controversy around the subject, with some members insisting the burning of flags is a legitimate form of political speech and to ban it would be a curb on freedom of expression.
Various parties opposed the proposal at the time, including Die Linke (The Left Party), and the populist-right Alternative fur Deutschland (Alternative for Germany, AfD) who insisted that as the European Union is not a state, it does not deserve to be protected as one. Fabian Jacobi of the AfD said the real purpose of the law was to make “citizens to think twice about whether they dared to publicly criticize the EU”, the report stated.
In the end, only the AfD voted against the ban, citing “excessive interference with freedom of expression”.
Die Linke is a leftist party that likes acting edgy once in a while, but they’re just as much part of the establishment as every other party.
So it only makes sense that they went along with it in the end.
Previously it had been a crime to burn a publicly displayed flag if, for instance, a foreign embassy was attacked. But if a private individual purchased a flag and set fire to it, that would not be a problem — until now.
Speaking in support of the change, Angela Merkel’s justice minister Christine Lambrecht said burning a flag could not be a peaceful protest, and therefore should not be protected. Quite the opposite, in fact, as she said flag burning fuels “hatred, anger and aggression” and “hurts the feelings of many people”, reports German newspaper Die Presse.
The report notes the change of the law closes a loophole in the German penal code, and means the EU flag now has equal protection to national flags.
I was gonna go on a rant about old, fat, ugly, childless women, but I looked into this Christine Lambrecht bitch and she actually has a kid!
She’s still old, fat and ugly though.
These laws are part of a suite of laws in Germany where the government claims a monopoly on organising relations with foreign nations, with private citizens banned from a range of actions, ranging from burning flags to even insulting foreign politicians.
This has been used — and some have claimed, abused — by the German government in recent years against even artists who have satirised foreign leaders. Breitbart London reported in 2016 on the curious case of German television comedian Jan Böhmermann, who used his show to take aim at Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, mocking the Islamist for his treatment of journalists and minorities.
The Turkish government was so outraged by the comedian’s behaviour that the German ambassador was summoned and demands Germany prosecute the comedian made.
The poem was banned in Germany that year after a court found just six of its 26 lines were legal, and Böhmermann faced up to five years in prison under paragraph 103 of the German criminal code, which forbids insulting a foreign head of state or diplomat, when the Merkel government gave the nod for the prosecution to proceed.
A counter case by the comedian claiming that his treatment amounted to state persecution was thrown out by a judge in 2019.
I sure hope the stupid Kraut goyim remember to be grateful for all these freedoms they have.
And while they’re at it, spare a thought for those poor Chinks and Russians who don’t even have the freedom to be vibrantly enriched with minority status in their own country.
This is what those people in Hong Kong are rioting for.