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Site full of hate, rights panel told

By John Moorhouse

Novenber 30th 2006

John Beck says he knows who created an alleged white supremacist website -- but it wasn't him.

The Kelowna area man has been named as a co-respondent in a Canadian Human Rights Tribunal hearing in Penticton into a complaint against the B.C. White Pride website, now found at www.bcwhitepride.org.

The Centre for Research-Action on Race Relations (CRARR) filed the complaint based on information uncovered in a separate investigation. Fo Niemi, executive-director for CRARR, said Wednesday the complaint was launched in 2003 when the centre became aware of the B.C. White Pride website.

"When we went on the website, we were aghast at the kind of language, the kind of message and the nature of the communication that was posted on the website," he said. "It was violently anti-blacks, anti-Semitic -- against people with disabilities."

Niemi said the Canadian Human Rights Act is designed to protect this country's values of equality and dignity for all members of society. No one should be able to hide behind freedom of speech when exposing people to hate and discrimination, he said.

"We cannot justify it in the name of freedom of speech, because that's against the notion of freedom itself," he said. "We have to stand up to the right not to be exposed to this kind of filth and this kind of hate."

The website's home page attacks what it claims is the Jewish-controlled media, with "an agenda of liberalism, political correctness, multiculturalism and race mixing culminating in the breakdown of morality and family values in our proud culture."

"Moreover, we are frustrated with governmental policies that no longer serve the best interests of White people, the erstwhile founders of this great nation and so many others around the world."

The hearing is being chaired by Human Rights Tribunal member Pierre Deschamps who dismissed a motion to have Beck dropped as a respondent in the case.

However, Beck denied Wednesday that he was involved in establishing the website.

"I know the people who created it, but I will not identify them," he said in an interview. "It's not me."

Beck said he was first informed that an investigation was underway in September 2005.

"I think it's a travesty to bring someone in front of a panel for allegedly expressing politically incorrect views," he said.

Beck declined to comment directly on the allegations before the tribunal. He is being represented at the hearing by Paul Fromm of the Canadian Association for Free Expression.

Fromm, a former Ontario school teacher with a history as an advocate for the extreme right, refuted suggestions that Beck admitted via e-mail he had anything to do with the white pride website.

"They've been chewing on this bone for three years and they can't find who's behind it," he said.

Fromm said he expects upcoming testimony to outline how Beck was contacted via e-mail by a man pretending to be a woman, "sending fairly solicitous pictures to Mr. Beck and getting him into a conversation."

"You should be free to express your views," he added. "It is our argument that it is almost impossible to criticize any of the privileged groups, without in some degree hold them out to some contempt."

In opening testimony Wednesday, human rights activist Shane Martinez of Toronto described how he began investigating the B.C. White Pride website in March 2004 while he was in the Dominican Republic.

Martinez noted the website has since been taken over by Hal Turner, an American who also operates an Internet radio program out of New Jersey.

"I believe it's strange to open a website in the U.S. while the website is almost all Canadian in content," he said.

The hearing is scheduled to continue until Friday at the Penticton Lakeside Resort.

© Thursday, November 30, 2006Copyright PentictonHerald.ca