The Board of Appeal has granted spokesperson of the Danish association
‘Oproer’ (Rebellion), Patrick Mac Manus, permission to appeal the
confiscation of the association’s international appeal to the Supreme
Court.
‘Rebellion’s’ international appeal was removed from the association’s homepage by order of the Copenhagen Magistrate’s Court on 12 August 2005. This injunction was upheld 14 October 2005 by the High Court.
In May 2005, ‘Rebellion’ addressed an international appeal, in both English and Spanish, to almost 300 European democracy and solidarity movements, urging them to counter the threat to political and civil liberties posed by anti-terrorism legislation, and, in particular, to challenge the ‘terrorist list’ of the European Union by mobilising material support for resistance movements on that list. The appeal does not specify which resistance or liberation movements should be supported, only that such movements should “seek to further secular, democratic, and humanist goals”. In October 2004, ‘Rebellion’ had itself transferred 14000 Euro to FARC (Colombia) and PFLP (Palestine).
Immediately following the confiscation of its appeal, ‘Rebellion’ encouraged other Danish organisations to publish it on their homepages, and to contact their own international networks. The appeal is now to be found on approximately 50 national and international websites.
The Danish Board of Appeal grants permission to appeal to the Supreme Court only in cases involving fundamental legal or constitutional principles. The association ‘Rebellion’ has argued that the confiscation of its international appeal is in conflict with both paragraph 77 of the Danish Constitution “prohibiting the re-introduction of censorship at any time”, and the European Declaration of Human Rights, Article 10, on freedom of expression. Moreover, the lower courts had in their injunctions merely made reference to the ‘terrorist list’ of the European Union, without in any way assessing the legal validity of such a list in the Danish legal system.
April 26, 2006
