COURT UNPLUGS HATE WEBSITE(Canada)
15/11/2005- For the first time in Canada, a court has temporarily banned a London, Ont., man from posting alleged white supremacist and anti-Semitic Internet messages the judge describes 'as vile as anyone can imagine.' The interim injunction from the Federal Court of Canada is considered a legal milestone because it is normally left to the Canadian Human Rights Commission to order hate-mongering out of cyberspace, a lengthy process. But commission lawyer Monette Maillet said the agency went to court seeking a unique injunction to halt Tomasz Winnicki from spreading his messages while a two-year-old complaint against him continues to wind its way through the system. 'It's really groundbreaking,' said Richard Warman, a federal public servant who filed the complaint. 'It shows as the human rights process is grinding along, that you can take steps to ensure that the hate propaganda isn't still being put out there in the meantime.' Warman, an Ottawa lawyer, estimated there are almost 50 white- supremacist and neo-Nazi websites used by Canadians, and they are usually channelled through U.S. servers beyond the reach of Canadian law. Warman's complaint against Winnicki is one of about a dozen he is pursuing in his quest to stop Canadians from posting hate on the Internet. Judge Yves de Montigny acknowledged he was embarking on 'uncharted territory' in his recent ruling and he stressed granting the interim injunction does not mean he is pre-judging the outcome of the human rights process or trying to stifle free speech. The ruling contains numerous 'offensive and debasing' statements posted online. 'Mr. Winnicki apparently stated that black people were intellectually inferior and dangerous and that the Jewish-controlled government was to blame, that European girls were murdered by Jewish people because the latter hate European beauty and nobility, that persons of the black race are subhuman and inherently criminal and so on,' de Montigny wrote.
Edmonton Journal http://www.canada.com/edmonton/edmontonjournal/index.html