Aug 2010
A Petition on behalf of Vincent Reynouard
Friend
Paul-Eric Blanrue, Founder of the research group Cercle Zététique, and author
of Sarkozy, Israël et les Juif, is circulating the following petition on behalf
of Vincent Reynouard.
Those who wish to sign this communiqué along with me can send me their names and
contact information at the address eugenie.
blanrue@laposte.net. It is not a question of supporting Vincent Reynouard’s
religious, political or historical ideas but of defending his right to express
them. To challenge them, an open, democratic, fair and honest debate will
suffice.
In France, a writer, father of eight, is in prison for his historical research.
And the so-called free press says nothing about it!
With a wife and eight children, the Frenchman Vincent Reynouard, aged 41, is a
chemical engineer by training, a graduate of the ISMRA (“Institute of sciences
of atomic matter and radiation”) in Caen (Normandy). He readily presents himself
as a traditionalist Catholic and does not hide his ultra-conservative political
opinions. But, most important, he publicly disputes, in his DVDs and writings,
the conventional version of Second World War history. He is one of those
researchers who declare themselves to be "revisionists" and who are called
"deniers" by others because they do not believe in the existence of homicidal
gas chambers in the wartime German concentration camps.
Paul-Eric Blanrue
In 2005, Reynouard wrote and sent to numerous tourism offices, museums and town
halls a 16-page brochure entitled "Holocaust? Here’s what’s kept hidden from
you…”, in which he took a view altogether opposite to that of academic history.
French justice immediately pounced upon him.
His trial in 2007 at the criminal court in Saverne (Alsace) resulted in a
sentence of one year’s imprisonment, a fine of 10,000 euros and an order to pay
damages of 3,000 euros to the antiracist league “LICRA”. In June 2008 the court
of appeal in Colmar upheld the prison sentence and ordered him to pay a total of
60,000 euros (a 20,000 euro fine, damages, mandatory publication of the ruling
and court fees). Severity as never seen before.
Since he resides in Belgium, France launched a European arrest warrant for
Reynouard in order to make him serve the prison sentence ordered by the Colmar
court. On July 9th he was imprisoned by the Belgian police, pending his
extradition to France. All of which leads him to say: "When people can think of
no other way but imprisonment to get rid of a verbal opponent, it’s because they
have no arguments."
Conclusion: A 41-year-old father of eight is currently in prison for his
historical research, because of the Gayssot Act.
This Act of the French parliament (“article 24bis” of the law governing the
press), having come into effect upon publication in the Journal Officiel on July
14th 1990, prohibits the "disputing (...) of the existence of one or more crimes
against humanity as defined by Article 6 of the Charter of the International
Military Tribunal [known as the Nuremberg Tribunal] in annex to the London
Agreement of August 8th, 1945. "
In my book Sarkozy, Israël et les Juifs (Oser Dire publishers, [Belgium], 2009),
I recall that this freedom-killing law has been strongly criticized in the past
by such personalities as the French academician Simone Veil; the Permanent
Secretary of the French Academy, Hélène Carrère d'Encausse; the government
ministers Jean Foyer, Jacques Toubon, Alain Peyrefitte; the historians Henri
Amouroux, Pierre Vidal-Naquet, Annie Kriegel, Francois Furet, Alain Besançon,
Jacques Willequet and François Bédarida; the founder of the Hannah Arendt
Research Institute, Chantal Delsol; the 1988 Nobel laureate for economics,
Maurice Allais; the writers Michel Tournier, Louis Pauwels, Michel Houellebecq,
Philip Murray, Jean Daniel, Vladimir Volkoff, Michel Rachline and Alain
Robbe-Grillet; the judges Philippe Bilger, Alain Marsaud and Raoul Béteille; the
legal scholars Olivier Duhamel, Anne-Marie Le Pourhiet, Emmanuelle Duverger,
André Decoq and Guy Carcassonne; the lawyers Jacques Vergès and John Bastardi
Daumont; the philosopher Paul Ricœur; the comedian Bruno Gaccio; defenders of
the freedom of expression like the founder of Reporters Sans Frontières Robert
Ménard (who denounces it as a "thought police") and Gabriel Cohn-Bendit; the
journalists Dominique Jamet, Delfeil de Ton, Alain Rollat, Albert du Roy,
Philippe Tesson, Jacques Julliard and Ivan Rioufol; also by the former president
of the Ligue des droits de l’homme, historian Madeleine Rebérioux. Abroad, the
American linguist Noam Chomsky has declared himself an absolute opponent of it.
For the Belgian physicist and intellectual Jean Bricmont, "the Gayssot Act is a
legal regression of several centuries”. As for Presidents Hugo Chávez and
Mahmoud Ahmadinedjad, they have strongly condemned the repression resulting from
this law.
Henceforth it falls to us to defend free expression in deed and not just in
theory. Why is no one heard publically denouncing the present fate of Vincent
Reynouard? What are Reporters Sans Frontières, Amnesty International and Human
Rights Watch doing? No organ of the media, either French or foreign, has
informed public opinion of this case. Such silence is abnormal.
Personally, I have decided to act as a historian and as a citizen, and to make
it known, through this press release, how appalled I am at the fact that, in our
country, we have a man thrown into prison for his opinions, however unusual,
shocking and controversial they may be. Such treatment is not worthy of France
or her intellectual tradition. It is not for the law to say how historical truth
is set down: in a free country, that is the task of historians.
The Gayssot Act, which restricts the historian’s freedom, is unworthy of a
democratic State; it is a wicked law. I therefore ask for its immediate repeal.
I hope to be joined soon by dozens, hundreds, thousands of other people unable
to remain indifferent in the face of a scandal that seriously harms the image of
France and flouts the spirit of the Republic.
Those who wish to sign this communiqué along with me can send me their names and
contact information at the address
eugenie.blanrue@laposte.net. It is not a question of supporting Vincent
Reynouard’s religious, political or historical ideas but of defending his right
to express them. To challenge them, an open, democratic, fair and honest debate
will suffice.
We shall go over the results of this request for signatures towards the end of
September. Meanwhile, thank you for circulating this text to the utmost extent.
Paul-Eric Blanrue, Historian,
Founder of the research group Cercle Zététique,
Author of Sarkozy, Israël et les Juifs (Oser Dire publishers, [Belgium], 2009)
To sign, please send a message to the author of this communiqué, Mr Paul-Eric
BLANRUE:
eugenie.blanrue@laposte.net