Companion website for
COMPARATIVE MEDIA LAW & ETHICS
by TIM CROOK
to be published by Routledge on 15th December 2009
For details of the book, please visit Routledge.
Author's profile at Goldsmiths, University of London
Chauvy and Others v France ECHR June 2004
1. This was the second defamation/privacy action from France in 2004 concerning allegations of collaboration and treason from the Second World War. The writer and journalist Gérard Chauvy authored a book entitled Aubrac-Lyon 1943 which was published in 1997 by Editions Albin Michel. He claimed that his book put to the test “the official truth as related at length in the media, notably by the Aubracs [Raymond and his wife Lucie], and in a film that sings their praises”.
2. The book investigated the Resistance movements in Lyons in 1943. On 21 June 1943 Klaus Barbie, the regional head of the Gestapo, arrested the main Resistance leaders at a meeting in Caluire in the Lyons suburbs. Among those arrested were Jean Moulin, General de Gaulle's representative in France and the leader of the internal Resistance, and Raymond Aubrac, a member of the Resistance movement who managed to escape in the autumn of 1943. The ECHR observed there cannot be “any doubt that this book is aimed almost exclusively at the Aubracs and purports to use rigorous historical method to destroy their so-called 'legend' as members of the Resistance.” The Aubracs said the book accused them ‘of treachery and of concealing treachery’ and constituted a direct assault on their status as founding members and organisers of the Freedom (Libération) Resistance network and, in Raymond Aubrac's case, as the military commander of the Secret Army.’
3. The tribunal de grande instance said: ‘judges cannot, in the name of some higher imperative of historical truth, abandon their duty to protect the right to honour and reputation of those who were thrust into the torment of war and were the unwilling but courageous participants therein. Immortalised by their contemporaries as illustrious myths, these men and women have not for all that become mere subjects of research, shorn of their personality, deprived of sensibility or divested of their own destinies in the interests of science. Because he has forgotten this and has failed to comply with the essential rules of historical method, the accused's [the author of the book's] plea of good faith must fail.”
4. The court found the author and his publisher guilty of public defamation and ordered them to pay fines of 100,000, and 60,000 French francs and compensation of 200,000 French francs. The court also ordered that a statement be published in five daily newspapers and for each copy of the book to carry a warning in like terms.
5. The Court of Appeal observed: “Anyone who alleges a specific fact must first seek to verify its accuracy. Although this requirement is general, it is especially justified when the accusation is particularly serious – such as of an act of treachery leading to the death of the main Resistance leader – and when, as a historian, its maker is accustomed to questioning sources.”
6. The ECHR observed: ‘More than half a century after the events there was a risk that there their honour and reputation would be seriously tarnished by a book that raised the possibility, albeit by way of innuendo, that they had betrayed Jean Moulin and had thereby been responsible for his arrest, suffering and death.’ The court said it had to consider ‘the right of the persons attacked by the book to protect their reputation, a right which is protected by Article 8 of the Convention as part of the right to respect for private life.’
7. Judge Thomassen in a concurring opinion said: ‘While it is true that the book that was published in the instant case was on a subject of general interest, the Chamber gave precedence to protection of the reputation, which is part of the concept of private life that is protected by Article 8 of the Convention…I agree with that conclusion because the book is little more than pure conjecture and constitutes a direct assault on the integrity and identity of Mr and Mrs Aubrac that robs them of their dignity. It is necessary to reaffirm respect for human dignity as one of the most important Convention values and one which historical works must also foster.’
