Swiss Man Jailed After Saying Women and Men Have Different Skeletons
A man from Switzerland has been handed a prison sentence for posting a comment on Facebook in which he said that skeletons can only be male or female. The Telegraph has more.
Emanuel Brünisholz was convicted of hate speech and fined by a court in the Swiss canton of Bern over the Facebook post, which also suggested that trans people were mentally ill.
When he refused to pay the fine, Brünisholz was instead sentenced to 10 days in prison and began his sentence on Tuesday.
He said in a Facebook post: “If you excavate LGBTQI [lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex] people after 200 years, you will only find men and women among the skeletons; everything else is a mental illness that was fostered by the curriculum!”
The post was sent on to Swiss police, who summoned Brünisholz for questioning on suspicion of incitement of hatred, according to the Swiss newspaper Inside Paradeplatz.
A transcript of Brünisholz’s interrogation shows that he was incredulous about the accusation and kept laughing while answering the officers’ questions.
After confirming he wrote the post, Brünisholz was convicted of discrimination and incitement to hatred by the Emmental-Oberaargau regional court and fined 500 Swiss francs (£460).
According to Brünisholz, he refused to pay the fine and instead was required to serve a 10-day prison sentence in what he viewed as a violation of his free speech rights.
He did not launch an appeal against the verdict because his lawyer felt it would be “hopeless”. In addition to the fine, he must pay 800 Swiss francs (£740) in legal costs.
Brünisholz, a brass instrument maker, said that his comment about skeletons being only male or female was a biological fact, and therefore could not be a form of hate speech. …
But Brünisholz’s suggestion that transgender people were mentally ill may have been what drew the ire of Swiss authorities, as it is illegal in Switzerland to “publicly denigrate” a person based on their sexual orientation. …
The case was brought to the attention of UK free speech campaigners this week after Brünisholz contacted Graham Linehan, the Irish comedian and writer of Father Ted.
“I am fully prepared to go to prison, if that is what it takes to expose the absurdity and authoritarianism of the trans ideology that has now taken root in Switzerland,” Brünisholz said in a message that Linehan published on his X account.
He added: “I intend to face it with good humour; I will not let myself be bent or broken by those who hope to silence me through pressure or intimidation. That, after all, is their aim: to wear me down until I fall quiet. I have no intention of doing so.”
Worth reading in full.