Letters to David Irving on
this Website

John
Gilchrist
discovers,
Thursday, June 14, 2007, why Amnesty International sat on its hands while Austria imprisoned David Irving for an opinion expressed seventeen years earlier: some restrictions apply.

Why did Amnesty not Intervene in the Irving Case?

HAVING read your article about Amnesty
International, I recall writing to this organisation soon after you were imprisoned in
Austria. I suppose the negative response I received was expected, however it does demonstrate the duplicity of this organisation.

All the very best

John
Gilchrist

Some restrictions apply – Amnesty
International admits it is for free speech — their speech, not that of others

John Gilchrist wrote December 5, 2005 to
Amnesty International:

I HAVE just learnt that Mr. David Irving, a renowned Historian has been arrested in Austria for nothing more than expressing historical opinion at a meeting of students. I have no method of communicating with this person or any knowledge whether he is being adequately represented.
Can you tell me what steps you are taking to secure his release?

John
Gilchrist

Amnesty International replied after a week, December 12, 2005

THANK you for your email concerning Amnesty
International’s position on David Irving’s arrest.

Amnesty International’s position on the issue of ‘Holocaust denial’ is based on international human rights standards.

The
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) states, in Article 19, that everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression, but that certain restrictions may be placed on that right if they are necessary for the respect of the rights of others; Article 20 states that any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence shall be prohibited by law.

In line with this and other international human rights standards, Amnesty International works for the right to free expression and adopts as prisoners of conscience people who are imprisoned for exercising their right to freedom of expression, however it will not adopt as prisoners of conscience people who are imprisoned for using hate speech to deliberately or recklessly incite acts of violence, discrimination, or hostility against another group.

The language used to advocate hatred is not always explicit or direct. Sometimes it uses euphemisms which, over the years, become well known, such as denying the occurrence of the Holocaust and thereby alleging that the extensive documentation of the Holocaust is fraudulent and that its victims are lying.

Since Jews, Roma, gay persons, and disabled persons were the principal victims of the Holocaust and are still subject to discrimination, this can constitute advocacy of hatred and an incitement to discrimination and hostility against those groups.

In line with its normal practice, when applying the policy to individual cases, AI [Amnesty
International] considers each case on its own merit. In cases where it determines that an individual who has been imprisoned for denying the Holocaust has, in effect, advocated hatred as described above, AI would not adopt them as prisoners of conscience. This is the reason why we will not adopt David Irving as a prisoner of conscience.

Marie-Anne
Ventoura Supporter Care Team Amnesty International UK Tel: 020 7033 1777 Amnesty International UK The Human Rights Action Centre
17-25 New Inn Yard London EC2A 3EA

John Gilchrist then wrote to Amnesty
International:

I MUST say that I am rather disturbed by your insensitivity towards this man’s plight. Not the response I would have expected from an organisation reputedly dedicated to helping people who are the victims of conscience.

I am not aware of the allegations of racial hatred you are directing towards Mr. Irving. To my knowledge, having read several of Mr.
Irving’s books, he does not mention anything about “Holocaust denial”, nor has he ever written a book on that subject. His books diarize in great detail the events of the second world war – warts and all; something that other historians either fail to report or are too lazy to research.

I think any reasonable person will agree that the truth, however unpopular, is far more important than lies, which distort history and offer no real hope of peace in this unstable world. Palestine and Iraq for example are the main ones that come to mind.

If in your opinion Mr. Irving has committed a crime then why hasn’t he been arrested, in the USA or indeed his own country the UK? Aren’t your actions rather reminiscent of past dictators in judging a person solely by his reputation?

I am not too young to remember the ‘Soviet Gulags’ for which so many innocent people found their way for no other crime than to express opinions contrary to the ruling elite; and were allowed to rot for precisely the same reasons you are condemning Mr. Irving. Perhaps I am witnessing for once the true face of your organisation.

John
Gilchrist

ITEMS FROM OUR DOSSIER
ON THE ARREST, TRIAL AND IMPRISONMENT OF DAVID
IRVING

• How it all began: Volksstimme, Nov 8, 1989: Sperrfeuer
  gegen Irving – Zwei weitere Auftritte inzwischen
  verboten | and the communist Volksstimme: Nur
  noch vor 80 treuen konnte der neonazinahe
  „Historiker’ Montag nacht in Wien reden (German)
  – the next day the arrest warrant was issued.
• Nov 8, 1989: After a communist-inspired riot in
  Vienna the socialist government issued an Arrest Warrant
  against David Irving at the behest of the
  Dokumentationsachiv des österreichischen

  Widerstands
  (i.e., Dr Erika Weinzierl).

• Nov 24. 1989: Mr
  Irving thanks his Austrian lawyer Dr Herbert
  Schaller
• June 22, 1992: Those nice folks next door: Flashback
  – the
  Austrian ambassador in London answers a demand from the
  Board of Deputies of British Jews, promises to arrest Mr
  Irving
• Mar 10, 1994: the Austrian Government tells
  Australia that an Arrest Warrant was issued against
  Mr Irving

  on Nov 8, 1989 | [ and original
  German text]

• Oct 2001: David
  Irvine, son of the Lord Chancellor Lord Irvine, is
  arrested in Vienna in mistake for the British
  writer

Mr
Irving’s arrest on Nov 11, 2005

• Memoirs
  draft on the circumstances of Mr Irving’s arrest
• Mr Irving’s memoirs: The
  historian’s dramatic arrest by armed Austrian police in
  November 2005
• Our
  website first announces that David Irving has been
  arrested in Austria

  on Nov 10, 2005

• Feb 2, 2006: How
  they prepared for the worst at the Vienna Show-Trial
  of David Irving [and German
  original]
• Flashback: The
  Age, Australia, was among first to report on Nov 19, 2005
  Mr Irving’s secret arrest
  | Neutral
  German-language summary by Wiener Nachrichten Online of
  the history of the legal persecution of Irving,
  2000-2006
• The blind fury of the German media at Mr Irving:
  • NS-Revisionist
    David Irving in Wien inhaftiert (20.

    November
    2005)

  • David
    Irving bleibt in Wiener Untersuchungshaft (25.
    November 2005)
  • David
    Irvings Prozess vermutlich im Februar (2. Dezember
    2005)
  • Gerichtszeugin
    schreibt sich warm &endash; Christa Zöchling im
    “Profil” (26. Dezember 2005)
• Erika
  Weinzierl: David Irving übt “gezielte Provokation
  des Staates” (27.

  Dezember 2005)

• Daily
  Telegraph interviews Mr Irving’s brother, Feb 2006,
  and gets its leg pulled
• Gillian
  Reynolds comments on the BBC Radio Four broadcast on
  the 2000 Lipstadt trial (rebroadcast on the occasion of
  the Vienna trial)
• Letters
  written from his Austrian prison cell by David Irving
  to his friends, Nov 2005 to Dec 2006
• Jan 2006, The Observer prints Malte
  Herwig’s study of Mr Irving: “Hitler?

  Good in
  Parts”

• Daily
  Telegraph interviews Mr Irving’s brother, Feb 2006,
  and gets its leg pulled
• In
  March 2006 Mr Irving wrote in German from his Vienna
  prison comparing the world press reaction to the three
  year jail sentence with the spiteful German and Austrian
  media
• David Irving: A Radical’s Diary: The
  Appeal, and Release
  A very filthy cell. . . I lie down and wait for the
  glaring ceiling light to go out. It stays on all
  night.

Show
Trial in Vienna, Feb 20, 2006

• Feb 22, 2006: The
  Irish Times says the imprisonment of David Irving
  displays European hypocrisy towards Jews. “I have
  read most of David Irving’s works. He is a brilliant
  researcher, is partly mad, and is clearly bad.

  But those
  who say he denies the Nazi programme of genocide of Jews
  simply haven’t read his writings.”

• Mr Irving’s autobiography, continued: The
  show trial in Vienna
• Radical’s Diary: The
  trial
• Daily
  Telegraph interviews Mr Irving’s brother, Feb 2006,
  and gets its leg pulled
• Gillian
  Reynolds comments on the BBC Radio Four broadcast on
  the 2000 Lipstadt trial (rebroadcast on the occasion of
  the Vienna trial)
• Kate
  Connolly, right, The Daily Telegraph’s

  Berlin
  correspondent. Read her web diary, Feb 21, 2006, the day
  after the Irving trial in Vienna: “The interesting tale
  of David Irving” and the scores of supporting letters
  she received

• David
  Irving zu drei Jahren Haft verurteilt – Bildvorschau
  (20. Februar 2006)
• My
  perfect place to hang Irving kvells Giles Coren in The
  Times | and David Irving’s answer

IMPRISONMENT
2005-2006 awaiting appeal

• Der Spiegel asks
  a German historian, Hans-Ulrich Wehler, should British
  historian David Irving be placed behind bars? He says:
  “Pity for this Man is Out of Place”
• Australian Jewish News: Irving
  should not be censored, said Prof Singer in June 2006
• Letters
  written from his Austrian prison cell by David Irving
  to his friends, November 2005 to December 2006
• Mr Irving’s memoirs: Incarceration
  in Austria’s oldest jail: charged with serious
  thought-crime

Mr
Irving’s appeal court victory on Dec 20, 2006

• David
  Irving: A Radical’s Diary: The
  Appeal, and Release
  A very filthy cell. . . I lie down and wait for the
  glaring ceiling light to go out.

  It stays on all night.
  

• BBC:
  Irving not remorseful after jail : David Irving complains
  he was jailed for expressing “wrong views”
• BBC:
  Reactions to Irving release An Austrian court’s decision to release on probation UK
  historian David Irving – jailed for Holocaust denial –
  has prompted dismay among international Jewish
  organisations
• BBC:
  Irving not remorseful after jail : David Irving complains
  he was jailed for expressing “wrong views”
• Vienna’s left

  wing press whines at the Judge who
  ordered Mr Irving’s release The
  right wing judge gets grouchy | German
  original

PRESS
CONFERENCE, London, Dec 22, 2006 and aftermath

• Click here for hi-res images of David Irving’s Dec
  22, 2006 press conference in London: [1][2]
  [3]
  [4]
  >>
• David Irving: A Radical’s Diary: The
  Appeal, and Release
  A very filthy cell. . . I lie down and wait for the
  glaring ceiling light to go out.

  It stays on all night.
  

• The
  tragedy is that David Irving has emerged as a champion of
  free speech, says Joan Bakewell
• Letters
  to Deutsche Welle – a German-government website –
  unanimously praise David Irving and his appeal court
  victory
• American Free Press: David
  Irving is Back in London – was Railroaded into Jail by
  his own Attorney
• Lipstadt changes her spots.

  Remember how Deborah
  Lipstadt wailed that it was a crime for David Irving to
  be imprisoned for his opinions? Well, now she’s wailing
  that it is a crime for him to be released.

  See her web
  campaign against the right-minded Austrian judge:
  Irving
  given probation | Judges
  in Irving’s probation hearing [sic] |
  More
  on Judge in Irving’s Austrian case

• Irving
  says will bring Austria before UN Human Rights
  Council | Wiener
  Zeitung: Irving geht vor Menschenrechtsrat der Vereinten
  Nationen |
• Austrian Socialist party demands only Left-wing
  judges try such cases in future: OLG-Entscheidung
  nicht nachvollziehbar: Es stellt sich die Frage, ob
  Richter Maurer der

  geeignete Senatsvorsitzende in einer
  solchen Sache ist | Why
  was David Irving allowed out of Jail? asks Wiesenthal
  Center’s Efraim Zuroff | YNet,
  Israel: Law without justice

• BBC video of Mr Irving’s Dec 22 London press conference:
  video
  | audio
  | interview
  with an opponent (three times longer)
• BBC
  Today radio dialogue between star interviewer John
  Humphreys and Mr Irving

  on Dec 23, 2005: He shows no
  remorse

• Here’s an odd thing The
  result of the post-trial History News Network poll “Jail
  David Irving?” has been removed – but all the other
  postings have been left on | Flashback to Jun 2000:
  Australian
  poll, should historians be silenced?
• RAW writes Sunday, January 7, 2007 10:41 pm:
• “I just finished listening to audio
  of a BBC reporter interviewing you after your release.

  What jackasses these people are!”

• Canadian Online newspaper Orato exclusive: “Holocaust
  Historian David Irving Released From Prison: His First
  Interview From The Outside”
• Vienna’s left wing press whining at the Judge who
  ordered Mr Irving’s release The
  right wing judge gets grouchy | German
  original | Germany
  wants Holocaust denial to be EU-wide crime
  [Memo to Berlin: you blew it last time you tried to
  call the shots, in 1945; remember?] | International
  Herald Tribune:

  Berlin
  seeks to bar Holocaust denial in EU

• On Jan 7 the brilliant journalist Christopher
  Hitchens (right) on TV Ontario defended the right of
  David Irving not be imprisoned in Austria for his views.
  .

• In German: Deutsche National Zeitung publishes
  Exklusiv-Interview
  mit Irving: „Ich habe im Gefängnis 4.000 Seiten
  geschrieben” David Irving ist frei – jetzt geht er in die
  Offensive

David Irving