JD Vance rips into European leaders at Munich Security Conference, slams UK for criminalizing free speech

Diario As

14/2/2025

Categoría

🗞

Noticias

Transcripción

Mostrar la transcripción completa del vídeo

00:00I look to Brussels, where EU commissars warn citizens that they intend to shut down social

00:07media during times of civil unrest the moment they spot what they've judged to be, quote,

00:13hateful content.

00:16Or to this very country, where police have carried out raids against citizens suspected

00:20of posting anti-feminist comments online as part of, quote, combating misogyny on the

00:26internet, a day of action.

00:29I look to Sweden, where two weeks ago the government convicted a Christian activist

00:34for participating in Koran burnings that resulted in his friend's murder.

00:39And as the judge in his case chillingly noted, Sweden's laws to supposedly protect free expression

00:47do not, in fact, grant, and I'm quoting, a free pass to do or say anything without risking

00:55offending the group that holds that belief.

00:59And perhaps most concerningly, I look to our very dear friends the United Kingdom,

01:04where the backslide away from conscience rights has placed the basic liberties of religious

01:08Britons in particular in the crosshairs.

01:12A little over two years ago, the British government charged Adam Smith-Connor, a 51-year-old physiotherapist

01:18and an army veteran, with the heinous crime of standing 50 meters from an abortion clinic

01:26and silently praying for three minutes.

01:30Not obstructing anyone, not interacting with anyone, just silently praying on his own.

01:36After British law enforcement spotted him and demanded to know what he was praying for,

01:41Adam replied simply it was on behalf of the unborn son he and his former girlfriend had

01:47aborted years before.

01:49Now the officers were not moved.

01:51Adam was found guilty of breaking the government's new buffer zones law, which criminalizes silent

01:57prayer and other actions that could influence a person's decision within 200 meters of an

02:02abortion facility.

02:04He was sentenced to pay thousands of pounds in legal costs to the prosecution.

02:09Now I wish I could say that this was a fluke, a one-off crazy example of a badly written

02:14law being enacted against a single person, but no.

02:18Since last October, just a few months ago, the Scottish government began distributing

02:22letters to citizens whose houses lay within so-called safe access zones, warning them

02:28that even private prayer within their own homes may amount to breaking the law.

02:34Naturally, the government urged readers to report any fellow citizens suspected guilty

02:40of thought crime.

02:42In Britain and across Europe, free speech, I fear, is in retreat.

Recomendada