[attach id=716197 size="medium" align="right"][/attach]
The Broadcasting Authority has fined television station F-Living after far-right MEP candidate Norman Lowell made disgraceful comments about disabled children.
Mr Lowell, a 73-year-old Nazi sympathiser, will be running for MEP in the 2019 elections for the third time. In its decision, the BA referred to the comment made during a television programme on April 5.
The decision comes a day after the Commission for the Rights of People with a Disability filed a report to the police over Mr Lowell’s comments promoting eugenics during the TV interview on F-Living.
During the Nazi era in Germany, eugenics prompted the sterilisation of several hundred thousand people then helped lead to anti-Semitic programmes of euthanasia.
Mr Lowell was reported to have said on TV that horribly mentally defective babies should be aborted or granted a benign mercy killing.
During the interview, just weeks ahead of the European Parliament elections, he asked whether anyone enjoyed going to a village which was full of "village idiots" and whether anyone wanted "handicapped people".
The Broadcasting Authority said Mr Lowell had passed offensive remarks during the programme during which he also incited hatred based on race, religion or nationality.
He also passed comments about the African race by saying that their IQ was lower than that of Europeans.
F-Living CEO Karl Bonaci said his station was giving space to MEP candidates and that it respected freedom of expression of the people who appear on its programmes.
The BA said that while it respected the principle of freedom of expression, this was not absolute and that it was the station responsibility to ensure that people’s rights were protected from such comments.
The watchdog said the comments, especially those about disabled children, were “in poor taste”, fining the station €1,160 in the process.
Mr Lowell, who once said migrants should be gunned down at sea, was handed down a two-year jail term suspended for four years in 2008 after he was found guilty of inciting racial hatred and insulting the President of Malta.
He recently sparked more controversy after he compared the World War Two concentration camp Auschwitz to the "Disneyland of Poland".