The Canadian journalist Ezra Levant is in court again this week. This time it’s not the Human Rights Commission that’s after him, but the Canadian Islamic Congress, who have forced him to defend himself (at enormous expense) against a defamation lawsuit in a Toronto courtroom.

Last Saturday Trykkefrihedsselskabet (the Danish Free Press Society) presented Mr. Levant with the Sappho Award for 2014. Many thanks to Henrik Ræder Clausen for recording this video of the event, and to Vlad Tepes for processing and uploading it:

For more details on the CIC’s lawsuit, see this clip from Ezra Levant’s SUN TV program.

Visit Steen’s place for lots of photos and text (in Danish).

The following excerpts are from the prepared text of the introduction to Mr. Levant’s speech given by Katrine Winkel Holm, the acting President of the Free Press Society, as published by Dispatch International:

In February 2006, Ezra Levant’s news magazine, The Western Standard, was the first media in Canada to reprint the Danish Muhammed cartoons.

Trouble was to follow.

An imam was so incensed at these — as he described them — “hateful” drawings that he went to the police and demanded that Ezra Levant be arrested. When the police refused to comply, the imam went on to one of Canada’s numerous “human rights commissions” empowered to implement the country’s hate speech laws.

“I am expecting a formal apology … from The Western Standard. Please help,” the imam said.

Instead of rebuffing the imam with a condescending smile, the human rights commission took his complaint dead seriously.

The entire apparatus was mobilized against Ezra Levant. Later he found out that the commission had spent 900 days and secured the services of no less than 15 government employees to prepare the case against him.

When Ezra Levant contacted his lawyer, he was told that faced with the might of the human rights commission, most people give up, pay up and apologize.

Nobody had ever been acquitted after being accused of a human rights violation.

Ezra Levant could have chosen to cave in. He did the opposite: The human rights commission would get all the opposition he could muster.

In early 2008, he was summoned to a preliminary interrogation based on the imam’s complaint that he had violated the Koran’s proscription on blasphemy.

In Levant’s own words: “It was really happening: I had become the first journalist in the free world to be grilled by a government inquisitor about the cartoons.”

Ezra Levant made one demand as a condition for appearing before the inquisitor: That he be allowed to make a video of the interrogation. With hesitation, the interrogator, a woman by the name of Shirlene McGovern, complied. It was a decision she would live to regret.

A few days after Ezra Levant had posted the video on YouTube, it had been seen by 400,000 and created a perfect storm in the media.

And it is truly worth a look. With crystal clarity we are presented with a confrontation between a state representative demanding unlimited power to regulate the thoughts and pronouncements of citizens — all in the name of self-evident righteousness — and, on the other hand, a dedicated opponent of totalitarianism.

Shirlene McGovern’s opening question is revealing: What was your intention when publishing the Muhammed cartons?

“Why is that a relevant question?” Ezra Levant replied.

“I always ask people their intent … what was the intent and purpose of your article with the cartoon illustrations,” Ms McGovern answered soothingly.

But Levant was far from reassured. (Subsequently, he commented: “That one sentence summed up the commission’s illiberal nature. The idea that the government could haul in a publisher and force him to answer questions about his political beliefs didn’t seem extraordinary to this woman. Apparently, it was all in a day’s work.”)

Ezra Levant fired back: “We published those cartoons for the intention and purpose of exercising our inalienable rights to publish whatever the hell we want, no matter what the hell you think.”

Evidently, Ms McGovern wasn’t used to this attitude among her victims and appeared dazed by Ezra Levant’s broadside. And he continued: “It speaks for itself, that you dare ask a publisher in Canada in the name of the government what his political thoughts are. It shows you are hunting for at thought crime.”

[…]

As he told the increasingly dispirited Ms McGovern: “I reserve the maximum freedom to be maximally offensive, to hurt feelings as I like. I didn’t do that in this case. It was a reasonable publication, but that is not what should exculpate me; my right as a free man should.”

He added that he hoped Shirlene McGovern would take the case to a court of law in order to highlight the political scandal that it was. What a happy coincidence that the human rights commission chose to challenge a man like Ezra Levant who proved to be their downfall.

Out there in front of their computers people were jubilant and their rage was directed at state inquisitor Shirlene McGovern. It took only ten days for the human rights commission to announce that its servant had laid down the case, whereupon the chronically offended imam hastened to withdraw his complaint.

Most importantly: The public had seen for themselves what the hate speech legislation is all about. And last year its most notorious article, Section 13, was abolished.

This marks a rare and unusual victory in our common campaign against hate speech legislation. Canadian law has become less “corrupted by totalitarianism”. And we owe this to Ezra Levant.

Read the rest at Dispatch International.