Mueen Nawaz wrote:

> Community service may be good. Are the training courses what's worrying
> you?

Both worry me.  The community service may differ from the training 
courses in name only.  "Your community service will consist of meeting 
with group X and hearing about the xenophobia they've suffered."

In any event, legitimate governments do not punish opinions or the 
expression of opinions.

Furthermore, this law will be selectively enforced.  The history of 
restrictions on free speech give no example of such a law that was 
uniformly enforced whether A slandered B or B slandered A; the 
government has always taken sides, acting on one group's complaints no 
matter how ludicrous they were, and turning a deaf ear to the grievances 
of the other.

The groups with friends in Europe's government will use this law to 
suppress any statement with which they disagree.  They will claim that 
their racial, ethnic, or religious group was slandered by the statement. 
  If the government wants to curry their favor or avoid their disfavor, 
it will not bother to check if the claim has any real basis in fact, nor 
will it relent if the statement is objectively true.

Regards,
John

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