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Controversial exhibit protected by freedom of speech in Austria

Updated: 31/Dec/2006 14:41

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VIENNA (EJP)--- A controversial exhibit that compared the factory-farming of animals to the Holocaust is protected by the principle of freedom of speech, Austria’s High Court has ruled.

The court said, however, that the exhibit had been "pitiless, tasteless, exaggerated and even immoral."

“Ethical treatment”

The exhibit was mounted on March 26, 2004 on the Graben in Vienna by the German branch of the animal protection organisation Peta (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals).

It featured a large poster showing both a concentration-death camp inmate and a cow under the slogan "The Holocaust on Your Plate".

The exhibit also featured photos of concentration/death camp inmates lying in bunk beds and chickens in laying batteries under a quotation from Jewish writer Isaac Bashevis Singer: "Anyone who deals with animals will act like a Nazi."

Another photo set included pictures of children in prison uniforms behind a fence and pigs behind a gate under the caption "The Slaughter of Children", while another showed Jews being transported in railway freight cars and animals being shipped in the same manner under the caption "Journey to Hell".

A last set had photos of a mountain of bodies of dead Jews and of a heap of dead pigs and was shown under the caption "The Final Humiliation".

Communal concern

The association sponsored the exhibit as part of its campaign against the factory-farming and slaughter of animals.

But the exhibit drew intense criticism. The Austrian Jewish Community, political parties, passers-by and even other animal rights groups protested against it.

An organisation of Holocaust survivors sought a temporary restraining order in court that would have banned the public depiction of the images in the exhibit.

Organisers dismantled the exhibit after only one day, which made the question of a restraining order moot, but other critics filed a formal complaint with the Vienna Commercial Court on the grounds that the exhibit had mocked Jewish victims of National Socialism and featured the preaching of hatred.

They also pointed out that concentration/death camps had been set up for the murder of human beings whereas the factory-farming of animals had been started for the purpose of feeding human beings.

Freedom of speech

The Commercial Court said that the exhibit’s comparison of human beings and animals had been totally unacceptable and banned the exhibit’s reappearance in the city, but the ruling was appealed.

The High Court said that exhibit had in no way supported National Socialism and had neither violated the law against propagation of Nazi propaganda nor "relativised" Nazism.

The High Court also said that the principle of freedom of speech protected all except the most-extreme opinions.

Freedom of speech is anchored in Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The article has been interpreted as permitting statements in political discourse that "harm, shock or alarm" the state or its citizens.

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