The Official Website of the British People's Party

POLITICAL PRISONER

VINCENT REYNOUARD

We're not sure how many people are aware that the revisionist Vincent Reynouard has been imprisoned in Belgium and is facing deportation to France. He is certainly a very brave man.

From Vincent REYNOUARD, 25th July 2010:

Dear friends,

First of all, thanks to all of you who, following my detention, have written to me here at Forest prison. Having neither envelopes nor stamps in sufficient number, I cannot answer, and I'm sorry for that. Still, thank you for your showings of support, which go straight to my heart. I'll ask those who wish to write me to enclose in their letters a stamped envelope (at "Europe" postal rate) for the reply.

On July 23^rd the judges in Brussels declared that the arrest warrant issued for me by France was valid. Therefore extradition is now unavoidable. It will doubtless come about in ten days' time or so.

My lawyers have asked me to take certain actions to try to avoid prison in France, or at least minimize the length of detention. I shall do nothing of the sort. In effect, I want it to be possible to say that in 2010, in France, a father of eight children, aged from 1 to 17, languishes in prison simply for having publicly expressed revisionist arguments.

I want it known that in France, in 2010, a father of eight whose only weapon is a pen languishes in prison.

I'll be told in reply that, for now, 99.9% of people don't care. And it's true. But I repeat: we revisionists look further ahead, towards the day when, with the help of events, moods will change. Perhaps we'll be dead then. But when future researchers, unhindered by current taboos, study this history – our history – of the period 1990-2010 and see the repression of which the revisionists have been victims, then the conclusion to make will be obvious.

As I write, I think of my dear wife and my dear children.

I think of their state of mind... Yesterday, in the visiting room, Marina was crying. She told me my 14-year-old son wasn't eating and that the five "little ones" wanted their father. That hurts but, beside the fact that the Truth holds certain rights over us, if I carry on the revisionist struggle – the implications of which run well beyond the realm of History – I carry it on precisely for my children, as well as for other peoples' children, for the Palestinians, for Europe, and, more generally, for a world rid of this New World Order built on the ruins of the 3^rd Reich.

Whatever the hardships, I will never give in. The cops, judges and prisons will make no difference. The seed has been sown; it will germinate and, some day, it will grow.

Vincent REYNOUARD

Prison de Forest

52 avenue de la Jonction

B-1190 FOREST
Belgium

Why is no one heard publicly denouncing the fate of Vincent Reynouard?

To sign, please send a message to the author of this communiqué, Mr Paul-Eric BLANRUE: eugenie.blanrue@laposte.net

In France, a writer, father of eight, is in prison for his historical research

And the so-called free press says nothing about it!

Vincent Reynouard is French and has a wife and eight children. He is 41, a chemical engineer by training, and a graduate of the ISMRA (“Institute of sciences of atomic matter and radiation”) in Caen (Normandy). He is open about his traditional Catholic beliefs and does not hide his ultra-conservative political opinions. But, most importantly, he publicly disputes the conventional version of Second World War history in his DVDs and writings. He is one of those researchers who declare themselves to be "revisionists" and who are called "deniers" by others because they do not believe in the existence of homicidal gas chambers in the wartime German concentration camps.

In 2005, Reynouard wrote and sent to numerous tourism offices, museums and town halls a 16-page brochure entitled "Holocaust? Here’s what’s kept hidden from you…”, in which he took a totally opposite view to the mainstream in academic history. French justice immediately pounced upon him.

His trial in 2007 at the criminal court in Saverne (Alsace) resulted in a sentence of one year’s imprisonment, a fine of 10,000 euros and an order to pay damages of 3,000 euros to the antiracist league “LICRA”. In June 2008 the court of appeal in Colmar upheld the prison sentence and ordered him to pay a total of 60,000 euros (a 20,000 euro fine, damages, mandatory publication of the ruling and court fees). Such severe penalties have never been imposed before.

Since he resides in Belgium, France launched a European arrest warrant for Reynouard in order to make him serve the prison sentence ordered by the Colmar court. On July 9th he was imprisoned by the Belgian police, pending his extradition to France. All of which has lead him to say: "When people can think of no other way but imprisonment to get rid of a verbal opponent, it’s because they have no arguments."

Conclusion: A 41-year-old father of eight is currently in prison for his historical research, because of the Gayssot Act.

This Act of the French parliament (“article 24bis” of the law governing the press), having come into effect upon publication in the Journal Officiel on July 14th 1990, prohibits "disputing (...) the existence of one or more crimes against humanity as defined by Article 6 of the Charter of the International Military Tribunal [known as the Nuremberg Tribunal] annexed to the London Agreement document of August 8th, 1945. "

In my book Sarkozy, Israël et les Juifs (Oser Dire publishers, [Belgium], 2009), I recalled that this freedom-killing law was strongly criticised in the past by such personalities as the French academician Simone Veil; the Permanent Secretary of the French Academy, Hélène Carrère d'Encausse; the government ministers Jean Foyer, Jacques Toubon, Alain Peyrefitte; the historians Henri Amouroux, Pierre Vidal-Naquet, Annie Kriegel, Francois Furet, Alain Besançon, Jacques Willequet and François Bédarida; the founder of the Hannah Arendt Research Institute, Chantal Delsol; the 1988 Nobel laureate for economics, Maurice Allais; the writers Michel Tournier, Louis Pauwels, Michel Houellebecq, Philip Murray, Jean Daniel, Vladimir Volkoff, Michel Rachline and Alain Robbe-Grillet; the judges Philippe Bilger, Alain Marsaud and Raoul Béteille; the legal scholars Olivier Duhamel, Anne-Marie Le Pourhiet, Emmanuelle Duverger, André Decoq and Guy Carcassonne; the lawyers Jacques Vergès and John Bastardi Daumont; the philosopher Paul Ricœur; the comedian Bruno Gaccio; defenders of the freedom of expression like the founder of Reporters Sans Frontières Robert Ménard (who denounces it as a "thought police") and Gabriel Cohn-Bendit; the journalists Dominique Jamet, Delfeil de Ton, Alain Rollat, Albert du Roy, Philippe Tesson, Jacques Julliard and Ivan Rioufol; also by the former president of the Ligue des droits de l’homme, historian Madeleine Rebérioux. Abroad, the American linguist Noam Chomsky has declared himself an absolute opponent of it. The Belgian physicist and intellectual Jean Bricmont stated that: "the Gayssot Act is a legal regression of several centuries”. Presidents Hugo Chávez and Mahmoud Ahmadinedjad have also strongly condemned the repression resulting from this law.

Henceforth it falls to us to defend free speech by deed and not just theory. Why is no one heard publicly denouncing the present fate of Vincent Reynouard? What are Reporters Sans Frontières, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch doing? No organ of the media, either French or foreign, has informed public opinion of this case. This silence is abnormal.

Personally, I have decided to act as a historian and as a citizen, and to make it known, through this press release, how appalled I am at the fact that, in our country, we have a man thrown into prison for his opinions, however unusual, shocking and controversial they may be. Such treatment is not worthy of France or her intellectual tradition. It is not for the law to say how historical truth is set down: in a free country, that is the task of historians. The Gayssot Act, which restricts the historian’s freedom, is unworthy of a democratic State; it is a wicked law. I therefore ask for its immediate repeal.

I hope to be joined soon by dozens, hundreds, thousands of other people unable to remain indifferent in the face of a scandal that seriously harms the image of France and flouts the spirit of the Republic.

Those who wish to sign this communiqué along with me can send me their names and contact information to the following address: eugenie.blanrue@laposte.net. It is not a question of supporting Vincent Reynouard’s religious, political or historical ideas, but of defending his right to express them. To challenge them, an open, democratic, fair and honest debate will suffice.

We shall go over the results of this request for signatures towards the end of September.
Meanwhile, thank you in advance for making every effort to circulate this text to the utmost possible extent.

Paul-Eric Blanrue,
Historian,
Founder of the research group Cercle Zététique,
Author of Sarkozy, Israël et les Juifs (Oser Dire publishers, [Belgium], 2009)