REPRESSION OF PRESS FREEDOMS IN FRANCE
Jean Plantin, his Appeal Lost, has a Heavy Price to Pay
for being a Revisionist
On 21 June 2000 the court of appeal of Lyon (Hubert Fournier, Jean-Luc Gouverneur and Madame
ThČoleyre) handed down two decisions against Jean Plantin, editor and publisher of Akribeia
(Greek for "exactitude"), a learned review of revisionist tendency.
The first of these decisions convicts him for merely having named revisionist works which
the interior ministry has forbidden to be sold to minors, displayed in public, or publicised
(Act of 1949 on writings deemed dangerous for the young); the second convicts him of
questioning the official story of the Shoah (Fabius-Gayssot Act of 1990 on press freedom).
J. Plantin has received two six-month suspended prison sentences. His two computers, which
had been seized at his house in a police search, have been permanently confiscated. Moreover,
he will have to pay more than 140,000 French francs (about $20,000 / �13,400). This amount,
exorbitant for an editor without any resources, comprises, along with fines (40,000 francs),
the damages awarded to the Bínai Bírith (the enormously wealthy Jewish organisation of
Masonic character), the LICRA ("International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism") and
SOS-Racisme. It includes the legal costs of these associations and the court costs, but not
the sums that J. Plantin has had to pay for his defence or those others which the bailiffs
will soon be demanding of him.
Finally, J. Plantin finds himself prohibited from exercising his livelihood of editor-publisher
for a period of three years (professional ban modelled on the German Berufsverbot).
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In France it is unlawful to help someone pay his fines. But the law does not forbid
people from helping with funds towards payment of damages or from showing sympathy and
solidarity in other regards with one who has been struck by misfortune.
Jean Plantin may be contacted at 45/3 Route de Vourles 69230 SAINT GENIS LAVAL; telephone:
33 4 78 563 648.
PS: True to its policy of strict silence, apart from some exceptions, on the repression of
authors who are either revisionist or suspected of being so, Le Monde, the "serious",
"intellectual" national daily, has not breathed a word of these sentences passed on a
penniless scholar for press offences. As for those newspapers which have reported the
information, they have systematically ignored or minimised the financial sanctions.
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