Usually, when a journalist is censored in a Western nation, American news organizations respond with collective outrage.

But as a major attack on press freedom unfolds in Canada, America’s mainstream media are silent. Neither the TV networks nor the major newspapers have reported on hearings last week at what amounts to a Stalinesque show trial in Vancouver, British Columbia.  

Mark Steyn, a Canadian journalist who now lives in New Hampshire and whose column appears in National Review magazine as well as several U.S. and Canadian newspapers, is facing charges before British Columbia’s Human Rights Tribunal.

His crime? Spreading “hatred.”

The evidence? A 5,000-word excerpt of Steyn’s book America Alone that was carried as an article, “The Future Belongs to Islam,” in October 2006 by the Canadian magazine Maclean’s, which is also a defendant. The hearings, which were held June 2-6, amount to a star chamber with the rules of evidence constantly changing according to the whims of the three commissioners. A verdict is expected in September.

Steyn and the magazine are also expected to be charged with a hate crime by the national  kangaroo court, the Canadian Human Rights Commission, and another such tribunal in Ontario. Not a single defendant has ever prevailed before the national board in its 31 years of existence. To be accused is to be guilty, Soviet style.

The Canadian press has been all over this story, but it has not registered a blip in the United States, except for an AP brief, an article in The Washington Times and on conservative Internet sites and talk radio.

A highlighted piece of the case was a comment from an imam, Mullah Krekar, that Steyn drew from an interview in a Norwegian newspaper:

‘“We’re the ones who will change you,’ the cleric said. ‘Just look at the development within Europe, where the number of Muslims is expanding like mosquitoes. Every Western woman in the EU [European Union] is producing an average of 1.4 children. Every Muslim woman in the same countries is producing 3.5 children. …Our way of thinking will prove more powerful than yours.’”

British Columbia’s hate crimes law requires only a “reasonable determination that the excerpt did express hatred and contempt toward Muslims, and likely caused it to spread,” according to the National Post.  As evidence, complainants cited postings from two California-based Websites, FreeRepublic and Catholic Answers.

The hate crime charges were brought on behalf of  a recent law school grad, Khurrum Awan, and the Canadian Islamic Congress’s national president, Mohamed Elmasry, and its B.C. director, Naiyer Habib.

The three want to force Maclean’s to run an identically long piece from their point of view.  That or contribute $10,000 to a race relations foundation, as Awan admitted under cross-examination, according to the Globe and Mail. Later, speaking before the Canadian Arab Federation, Awan threatened to use civil courts to extract “a few million dollars” from any media company that refuses their demands.

For the record, Steyn and Maclean’s are accused of violating B.C.’s Human Rights Code, whose Section 7(1)(b) reads:

“A person must not publish, issue or display … any statement, publication …or other notice that is likely to expose a person … to hatred or contempt.”

“There has never been a case in this country that has had such clear, concise evidence, ever,” said Faisal Joseph, an attorney bringing the charge before the tribunal.  Joseph noted that the magazine had introduced Steyn’s piece this way:

“The Muslim world has youth, numbers and global ambitions. The West is growing old and enfeebled, and more and more lacks the will to rebuff those who would supplant it.  It’s the end of the world as we’ve known it.” Continued...