Come and get me
Not that there was ever any free speech in this dreary post-Soviet outpost, but when and how did it become a dhimmiocracy?
“Belarus editor jailed for Islam cartoon,” by Yuras Karmamau for Associated Press (thanks to all who sent this in):
MINSK, Belarus – A Belarus court sentenced a newspaper editor Friday to three years in prison for reprinting a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad that sparked worldwide riots when it was initially published in a Danish newspaper.
In Vienna, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe protested the sentence and called for the release of Alexander Sdvizhkov, the former deputy editor of the small-circulation Zhoda newspaper.
Security officers in Belarus launched an investigation of Sdvizhkov in February 2006 when he published the caricatures which had originally appeared in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten.
Fiery protests swept across Muslim countries in early 2006 in reaction to the Danish publication.
President Alexander Lukashenko ordered the paper shut the following month, calling the publication of the cartoon “a provocation against the state.” Sdvizhkov was arrested and charged with “inciting religious hatred” in November 2007 when he returned to Belarus following several months of living in Russia and Ukraine.
“Inciting religious hatred.” This conformism enforced with a jail term and extinguishing of free inquiry, then, is the future of the UK and other countries in the West. If one class in any country is exempt from criticism and yes, even ridicule, then a free society exists there no longer, and that class is a protected, privileged class.