One of the things about living in the United States is you tend to take for granted after awhile is the deference to freedom of speech that is baked into both the laws and the culture. It isn’t perfect, but this is a place where going after a news outlet for posting an illegally filmed sex tape will draw cries of censorship.
It’s weird then to think see stories like this from the Netherlands of all places.
A man from Kampen has been sentenced to 30 days in jail, 16 suspended, and put on probation for two years for insulting king Willem-Alexander.
The 44-year-old, who spent 14 days in custody after his arrest and so will not go back to prison, was found guilty of deliberately insulting the king by describing him on Facebook as a murderer, rapist and thief.
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In April, justice minister Ard van der Steur said the Netherlands is to abolish the law making it a criminal offence to insult a foreign heads of state but that he does not plan to remove the ban on insulting the Dutch monarch.
The Netherlands is one of the few country’s in Europe to have such a crime, for which the maximum sentence is five years in jail.