FREE SPEECH
They’re lining up to lodge complaints about columnist
Businessman’s allegations of hate incitement added to human rights
file on Doug Collins
By Les Leyne
Times Colonist staff
A Victoria businessman has joined the list of people taking a
controversial North Vancouver columnist to tribunals over his views
on the Holocaust.
Harry Abrams has filed two complaints with the Human Rights Council
over the writings of Doug Collins in the North Shore _News_. The
complaints cite the new section in the Human Rights Code introduced
by the New Democrat government in 1993 that make it an offence
against the code to expose a person or group of persons to hatred or
contempt. Abrams has complained that Collins has incited hatred and
contempt against Jews and also against Iranians, Chinese, Sikhs and
Japanese.
The Canadian Jewish Congress filed a similar complaint against
Collins. All three complaints are caught in the backlog of cases at
the Human Rights Council, but Abrams said Tuesday they have been
accepted for investigation.
Abrams, who runs an advertising company, said if multiculturalism is
accepted as a basic premise of society, then “we are going to be
compelled to enforce legislation remedying incitement of ethnic
hatred and violence.”
He also cited in his complaint a defunct Victoria weekly which once
carried Collins’ writing. The veteran writer’s column has also been
circulated on the Internet on a far-right, white supremacist web
site.
Collins has also been called before the B.C. Press Council by
retired professor Lionel Kenner. (Not the Canadian Jewish Congress,
as reported Tuesday).
Kenner has submitted a detailed critique of sources Collins relied
upon in a series of columns disputing the number of Jews killed in
the Holocaust and is demanding a censure against the newspaper for
publishing deliberate lies. The hearing is scheduled for Monday in
Vancouver.
North Shore _News_ editor Timothy Renshaw denied the claim and said
he is running a community newspaper, “not an organized conspiracy.”
“He [Collins] has a right to express his views.”
=30=
Last-Modified: 1995/07/30
Source: Victoria Times-Colonist, July 20, 1995 (A6)
