As I mentioned earlier this week, pro-fox hunting activists in Scotland and Great Britain are adopting a novel tactic in their fight to keep fox hunting legal. They are arguing that since Jews and Muslims are both allowed to kill animals without stunning them first in order to satisfy religious requirements for food preparation, that to ban fox hunting amounts to cultural persecution under European human rights conventions.
Whether or not that is a valid argument that will succeed in court is one thing, but certainly simply making that argument, as I have done above, should not be a crime. But, in fact, this week the British government arrested Daily Telegraph columnist Robin Page for making just this argument at a pro-hunting rally.
According to the Daily Telegraph,
Mr Page also told his audience that Londoners had the right to run their own events, such as the Brixton carnival and gay pride marches, which celebrated black and gay culture. Why therefore, he asked, should country people not have the right to do what they liked in the countryside.
Mr Page said yesterday: “I urged people to go on the march and I urged that the rural minority be given the same legal protection as other minorities. All I said was that the rural minority should have the same rights as blacks, Muslims and gays.
“What is wrong with that in a multicultural society? I said nothing that could possibly be interpreted as racist.”
The Telegraph goes on to point out that back in September a letter from the Prince of Wales was leaked to the media that made essentially the same argument.
Yet Page was arrested and charged with stirring up racial hatred.
Source:
Pro-hunting writer held in cell after race claims. Neil Tweedie, The Daily Telegraph (London), November 20, 2002.