Germany abolishes law that bans insulting foreign leaders
 

:fan:

Decision comes days after Donald Trump's inauguration and a year after prosecution of German comic who wrote crude poem about Turkish President

Germany has decided to abolish a law which defends the honour of foreign leaders.

International heads of state will no longer be able to ask the German government to prosecute people deemed to have offended them under an obscure passage of German law.

The decision comes just days after Donald Trump's inauguration as US President and a year after Angela Merkel authorised the investigation of a TV comic who wrote a crude poem about Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

German ministers have agreed to scrap a line of the penal code known as ‘lese majeste’, which prohibits insulting the representatives of international governments.

Justice Minister Heiko Maas called the law “outdated and unnecessary”.

“The idea of lese majesty arose in an era long gone by. It no longer belongs in our criminal law,” he said.

Comic Jan Boehmermann’s expletive-filled work, including allusions to bestiality, child sex abuse and ethnic discrimination in relation to Mr Erdogan, sparked a diplomatic row between Ankara and Berlin when it aired on German television last March.


http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...=facebook-post

Good, it seems like an archaic and silly law anyway.

Leaders above anyone else should be susceptible to criticism and parody.

Yeah it was a law that flys in the face of free speech.

It was a silly law, I feel really sorry for Germany they have done so much to make amends post war.

Meanwhile, Trump is prosecuting journalists for reporting on the civil unrest that took place during his inauguration, because "the sun split the clouds and all was well" in his alternative facts.

Technically it's against the law in the UK to push an occupied pram on the pavement. Laws are amusing sometimes...

And yet it's when it's UNoccupied that you get the really weird looks.

Trump improving German Law already, what a superstar.