The freedom of speech belongs to the classical human rights. However, are people who undermine human rights, and want to destroy democracy also entitled to the right of freedom of speech? This is the main question Q.L. Hong addresses in his PhD. thesis. At the end of July 2001, only six months before the attacks on the Twin Towers, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg reviewed the conflict between Turkey and the Refah Partisi. According to the Turkish government the goal of this political party is to destroy the Turkish democracy and to reinstate an Islamic theocracy instead. This being a reason for the Turkish government to disband the Refah Partisi. However is this not in violation with the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which among others guarantees the freedom of speech and association? The judges of the European Court found that this was not the case: the ban on this party was just.

The PhD. thesis of Quoc Loc Hong goes more deeply into the meaning of this case: can a democracy protect itself with repressive legislation against ‘enemies’, who use the freedom of speech to destroy this form of government, without violating the principle from which democracy itself derives her legitimacy? When this question is answered positively, another problem emerges. It must be prevented that the fight for democracy against the specific danger of anti-democratic expression will degenerate in a general restriction on the freedom of speech itself.

The question is, if a democratic justification can be found for the strict control to which the judiciary subjects this legislation. The theme of Hong’s thesis touches a highly current topic: the freedom of speech, which in the Netherlands too is currently at issue. Moreover this thesis discusses how democracy and the administration of justice should react, such as the sanctioning of the apologia, and the glorification of terrorist acts. lands too is currently at issue.

Dr. Quoc Loc Hong (1970, Tuy Hoa,Vietnam) studied Dutch Law at the University of Tilburg. He graduated in constitutional and administrative law with his thesis ‘Freedom in an untitled legal order’. Since his graduation in 1996 he has been working as PhD. student at the same university at the department of philosophy of law. Between January 2002 and September 2003 he worked as a senior clerk of the court at the chamber for aliens at the court of law in Alkmaar.