[hnlurker]

Oh please! Forgive us for not taking seriously the ideas, on this subject, of a country that arrested and tried, multiple times, an elected parliamentarian for the recitation of plain facts about criminal arrest statistics within the country.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_of_Geert_Wilders

We’ll call if discussion turns to cheese or chocolates.

[Blikkentrekker]

He was not arrested merely for citing statistics. The final straw was his “Less Moroccans!” chant which was interpreted as possibly made with the intent to inspire violence — it is not legal in the Netherlands to tell a man to kill another and the argument was whether his statements could be construed as such.

It was on the line, as you see in the article the public prosecutor originally did not want to bring charges but did so regardless, and he was acquitted.

The way you phrase it, suggesting that he was merely tried for citing statistics is obviously a big misrepræsentation of some of the comments he made, and the primary legal quæstion was whether they constituted a call to commit crimes, and the court found that they did not, though that he skirted awfully close to the line.

You would have a far stronger argument with the situation with MARTIJN, a pro pædophile activist group that was first forbidden, then that ruling was reversed on appeal, and a further appeal forbade them again, with the legal quæstion indeed being whether they issued a call to break the law — I personally do not believe they did and I find that the supreme court was searching for a reason and that the intermediate court's ruling was the correct one and that they remained within their legal right to advocate the law be changed, all the while not calling it be broken while it was still in effect as it was.