New Zealand, August 21-27 2004 Vol 195 No
3354 The right to
repel by Gordon
Campbell SHOULD controversial historian
David Irving have been allowed to enter New
Zealand? Should issues of freedom of speech -- and
freedom of movement -- be entrusted to politicians,
and exercised on grounds they need not disclose?
The decision to bar controversial historian David
Irving from entry to New Zealand does not, it now
seems, hinge on Irving once having been deported
from Canada. As Irving has pointed
out, BBC journalists routinely get deported for
displeasing Third World regimes, without losing
their chance to holiday in New Zealand.  David
Irving comments: Well well well. I am
informed that currently visiting New
Zealand is Baroness Caroline Cox,
deputy speaker of the House of Lords in
London -- she spoke to Kim Hill on Radio
New Zealand yesterday, August 21,
2004.
Now, isn't she
the same lady who has been sentenced in
absentia to five years' jail in Sudan for
illegally entering no-go zones? I wonder
what NZ Immigration rules say about the
admissibility of somebody who has
attracted a five-year jail term?
 Yes,
Kiwis: a Lady Jailbird is allowed in, but
a writer with a clean criminal record ...
not. Remember this at election time.
That's what democracy is about.
AS for Mr Justice Gray's remarks, the
following points should be made about the
"most offensive terms" I used: 
"his story of the Jew climbing into a
telephone box-cum-gas chamber" -- This was
an illustration of the absurd stories
retailed by survivors, such as the one-man
portable gas-chamber that was sent out
into the country- side to hunt down
escaped prisoners.
"more people died in the back of
Kennedy's car at Chappaquiddick
than died in the gas chambers at
Auschwitz" -- the reference was limited to
the fake (post-1948) gas chamber shown to
tourists at Auschwitz to this very day;
and the Chappaquiddick statement was thus
of course true; and no doubt the more
"offensive" for it.
"dismissal of the eye-witnesses en masse
as liars or as suffering from a mental
problem" - Some like Ada Bimko, who was
"shown the huge cylinders of gas" by a
friendly SS officer, as he affidavit
stated, clearly perjured themselves.
Others suffered from clearly identifiable
disorders, like memory errors and
hallucinations -- for example the artist
David Olère who drew hills and
mountains in the background of his
Auschwitz pictures (the region is flatter
than Florida or Calista Flockhart).
"an Association of Auschwitz Survivors and
Other Liars or
'ASSHOLS'" -- The
actual designation was Association of
Spurious Survivors of the Holocaust and
Other Liars, as the acronym shows; the
reference being to the Wilkomirskis
et al who have made a killing from
their lies about being surviviors. It is a pity that Judge Gray did not
properly grasp all these points, as I
stated in Court after he delivered his
judgment. As for Australian "holocaust
survivor" Mrs Altman, I never "asked her"
how much money she had made from her
tattoo. But it would be nice to know the
answer. |
In Irving's case, what his Canadian track record
has done is disqualify him from automatic entry
here. Under our immigration law, that places an
onus on him to gain an exemption from the Associate
Minister of Immigration, Damien O'Connor. At
which point, as Radio New Zealand morning host
Linda Clark asked Acting Prime Minister
Michael Cullen, isn't Irving's viewpoint on
the Holocaust what is really blocking his entry
here? "Well, the nature of what he says is
certainly part of it," Cullen agreed. "How he says
it, and what the likely reaction might be ..."It is a political call, in other words. How much
ruckus, how much offence to whom, may ensue -- and
even, how many diplomatic brownie points might
the government regain by barring Irving,
after its conflict with Israel about the recent
passport scandal? Few people will shed tears for Irving
personally. Yet his case spotlights the politicised
nature of ministerial exemptions, and the opaque
grounds on which they are used. A major drawback,
when -- constitutionally -- the minister's power to
grant exemptions is supposed to serve as a balance
between the powers of the state and the rights of
the individual. Irving is not the only player. In recent weeks,
Auckland lawyer Colin Amery has asked
O'Connor to explain why his client, the Iranian
deportee Saied Ghanbari, was not shown
clemency. Similarly, at the conclusion of the epic
Ahmed Zaoui case, the Immigration Minister
can grant an exemption and let Zaoui stay here --
and that provision has been cited by the Crown in
the Court of Appeal as a legal safeguard and
balance within the process to which Zaoui is being
subjected. Unfortunately, the law is utterly silent
on how, why and when this clemency should be
exercised. The process should be more open, says Auckland
University constitutional law professor Bill
Hodge. "Where there is a discretion granted to
politicians, there should be an obligation under
the statute to give some explanation for the
exercise of that discretion," he says. Good reasons
exist for doing so. "It may be quasi-legal, it may
be quasi-political, but I think there is a strong
argument morally, legally and so on for the
minister to justify the exercise of a
discretion." To Hodge, the cases cited vary in one key
respect. "With the Iranian and Zaoui, the
difference is that is they are in, and the
government is trying to get them out, while Irving
is out and trying to get in -- and that's an
inherently weaker position. So, understandably,
there is a bit more of a burden on him to put
forward some reason to come in." In practice, the airline carrier would probably
stop Irving from boarding a plane for New Zealand,
unless he already had a valid permit to enter here.
An unedifying spectacle, though, all round. "I
don't think we should fear a dicky, dicey, dodgy
historian," Hodge concludes. Clearly, Irving would not be an attractive
visitor. In Irving's failed libel
case against the historian Deborah Lipstadt in
2000, the presiding judge described
why Irving qualified as a Holocaust denier: "Not
only has he denied the existence of gas chambers at
Auschwitz and asserted that no Jew was gassed
there, he has done so on frequent occasions and
sometimes in the most offensive terms ... I cite
his story of the Jew climbing into a telephone
box-cum-gas chamber; his claim that more people
died in the back of Kennedy's car at
Chappaquiddick than died in the gas chambers at
Auschwitz; his dismissal of the eye-witnesses en
masse as liars or as suffering from a mental
problem; his reference to an Association of
Auschwitz Survivors and Other Liars or
'ASSHOLS' and the question
he asked [sic. Not
true] of Mrs Altman how much money she
had made from her tattoo." Irving's rights though, are not the point.
Surely, it is the right of every New Zealander to
hear and assess what he says? "You've hit the nail
on the head that I keep telling my students here,"
Hodge says. "Freedom of speech is really the
freedom to read, the freedom to hear and the
freedom to listen. It is far more important to the
listeners, the readers and so on than it is for the
speaker. Everybody is losing. If you go back to
John Stuart Mill, we might know the truth of
it [the Holocaust], but it might be dead
truth, if we do not allow it to be
challenged." 
Dossier:
attempts by US and New Zealand Jews to stop
David Irving's 2004 visit  FAQ:
Answers to frequently asked questions about Mr
Irving's visit-
Simon
Wiesenthal Center (USA) libels David Irving in a
smear letter to New Zealand ambassador
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Jailed gang
leaders defer to Israelis jailed by NZ, says
paper. Mossad autopsy on bungled NZ operation:
graves desecration was unplanned
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All's well that
ends well NZ
Parliament's stance on Irving, anti-Semitism
eases strains with Israel
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