[Peace-discuss] Free speech violation

[C. G. Estabrook]

[If you don't believe in free speech for views you despise,
you don't believe in it at all -- I thought Voltaire had made
that clear 200+ years ago.  This case shows that most European
societies don't believe in it at all, and how on this matter
the US, with all its compromises, is substantially in advance
of them, at least since the Sixties.  Some victories have been
won. Now I wonder how many US liberals will approve what the
Austrian courts have done? --CGE] 


   Holocaust denier Irving is jailed
   
British historian David Irving has been found guilty in Vienna
of denying the Holocaust of European Jewry and sentenced to
three years in prison.

He had pleaded guilty to the charge, based on a speech and
interview he gave in Austria in 1989.

"I made a mistake when I said there were no gas chambers at
Auschwitz," he told the court in the Austrian capital.

Irving appeared stunned by the sentence, and told reporters:
"I'm very shocked and I'm going to appeal."

An unidentified onlooker told him: "Stay strong!"

Irving's lawyer said he considered the verdict "a little too
stringent".

"I would say it's a bit of a message trial," said Elmar Kresbach.

Karen Pollock, chief executive of the UK's Holocaust
Educational Trust welcomed the verdict. "Holocaust denial is
anti-Semitism dressed up as intellectual debate. It should be
regarded as such and treated as such," Ms Pollock told the BBC
News website.

But the author and academic Deborah Lipstadt, who Irving
unsuccessfully sued for libel in the UK in 2000 over claims
that he was a Holocaust denier, said she was dismayed.

"I am not happy when censorship wins, and I don't believe in
winning battles via censorship... The way of fighting
Holocaust deniers is with history and with truth," she told
the BBC News website.

Fears that the court case would provoke right-wing
demonstrations and counter-protests did not materialise, the
BBC's Ben Brown at the court in Vienna said.

Irving, 67, arrived in the court room handcuffed, wearing a
blue suit, and carrying a copy of Hitler's War, one of many
books he has written on the Nazis, and which challenges the
extent of the Holocaust.

Irving was arrested in Austria in November, on a warrant
dating back to 1989, when he gave a speech and interview
denying the existence of gas chambers at Auschwitz.

He was stopped by police on a motorway in southern Austria,
where he was visiting to give a lecture to a far-right student
fraternity. He has been held in custody since then.

'I've changed'

During the one-day trial, he was questioned by the prosecutor
and chief judge, and answered questions in fluent German.

He admitted that in 1989 he had denied that Nazi Germany had
killed millions of Jews. He said this is what he believed,
until he later saw the personal files of Adolf Eichmann, the
chief organiser of the Holocaust.

"I said that then based on my knowledge at the time, but by
1991 when I came across the Eichmann papers, I wasn't saying
that anymore and I wouldn't say that now," Irving told the court.

"The Nazis did murder millions of Jews."

In the past, he had claimed that Adolf Hitler knew little, if
anything, about the Holocaust, and that the gas chambers were
a hoax.

	
COUNTRIES WITH LAWS AGAINST HOLOCAUST DENIAL
Austria
Belgium
Czech Republic
France
Germany
Israel
Lithuania
Poland
Romania
Slovakia
Switzerland

The judge in his 2000 libel trial declared him "an active
Holocaust denier... anti-Semitic and racist".

On Monday, before the trial began, he told reporters: "I'm not
a Holocaust denier. Obviously, I've changed my views.

"History is a constantly growing tree - the more you know, the
more documents become available, the more you learn, and I
have learned a lot since 1989."

Asked how many Jews were killed by Nazis, he replied: "I don't
know the figures. I'm not an expert on the Holocaust."

Of his guilty plea, he told reporters: "I have no choice."

He said it was "ridiculous" that he was being tried for
expressing an opinion.

"Of course it's a question of freedom of speech... I think
within 12 months this law will have vanished from the Austrian
statute book," he said.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/world/europe/4733820.stm

Published: 2006/02/20 20:19:07 GMT

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