Freedom of Speech? Puzzling

I bet Japanese historian society wouldn't support the arrest. Japanese government either!

Read the following story!
Austria Arrests David Irving, Writer Known as a Holocaust Denier
By SARAH LYALL
Published: November 18, 2005
LONDON, Nov. 17 - The writer David Irving was arrested in Austria last week, according to a statement on his Web site. Although he has not yet been charged, he is suspected of the crime of Holocaust denial.

Mr. Irving, who has written several dozen books about Germany and the Nazis, and who has said Hitler was not responsible for the Nazi campaign to massacre Europe's Jews, was arrested in Hartberg, in the southern province of Styria, Reuters reported.


Adam Butler/Associated Press
David Irving in London in April 2000.
Government officials told the news agency that Mr. Irving had been wanted since 1989, when a warrant was issued for his arrest in connection with speeches he had made in Vienna and in Leoben, in southern Austria. But they said they had not decided whether it was appropriate to charge him so many years after the fact. If he is tried and found guilty, he could be sentenced to up to 20 years in prison, officials told Reuters.

Holocaust denial is a crime in Austria, which has a confused history with Nazism and the Holocaust. For decades after World War II the country styled itself the "first victim of Nazi aggression," even though more than a million Austrians fought for the Axis, including Kurt Waldheim, who later became secretary general of the United Nations and president of Austria.

In addition, many prominent Nazis repackaged themselves as Austrian politicians in the postwar era, like Friedrich Peter, a onetime Waffen SS commander who headed the Freedom Party.

Supporters of Mr. Irving said in the Web site statement that he had been invited by "courageous students to address an ancient university association" in Vienna. The statement said that "the Austrian political police are believed to have learned of the visit by wiretaps or intercepting e-mails."

Mr. Irving has had other trouble with the law for similar reasons. In 1992 a German judge fined him $6,000 after he publicly asserted that no gas chambers had been used in Auschwitz, a claim he has often made. In the past he has been refused entry to Germany, Australia, Canada, Austria and Italy.

Mr. Irving was once known as a rigorous historian; some of his early works on Hitler and Germany were highly praised. But his views have became more extreme and he has become a hero of neo-fascist and neo-Nazi groups across Europe. Mr. Irving says he does not deny that the Nazis killed some Jews, but contends that the death toll among Jews in World War II was far lower than generally accepted.

He also questions whether the Nazis used gas chambers in their concentration camps.

He is perhaps best known for his failure, in 2000, to win a libel case he brought in Britain against the historian Deborah Lipstadt and her British publisher, Penguin.

In her book "Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory," Ms. Lipstadt characterized Mr. Irving as "one of the most dangerous spokespersons for Holocaust denial" and said "he is at his most facile at taking accurate information and shaping it to conform to his conclusions."

In a stinging decision that criticized Mr. Irving's scholarship, methods and conclusions, the judge in the case, Charles Gray of the British High Court, called him "an active Holocaust denier" and said he was a racist anti-Semite who had deliberately distorted the historical record to portray Hitler in a flattering light.

Austrian officials are expected to decide in the next day or two whether to charge Mr. Irving.

2005.11.18　 中國時報
否認納粹大屠殺 英史學家被捕
陳文和/綜合維也納十七日外電報導


奧地利內政部今天指出，因否認納粹德國大規模屠殺猶太人這段史實而被奧地利當局通緝的英國歷史學家大衛艾爾文，已於日前在奧地利的史帝利亞省境被逮捕。

據奧地利警方表示，具高度爭議性的史家大衛艾爾文已經被移送至葛拉茲的一所監獄。


大衛艾爾文因否認納粹德國大規模屠殺猶太人的罪行，牴觸奧地利的法律，而於一九八九年起被奧地利當局通緝，直至日前才被捕到案。

大衛艾爾文過去也曾被指控散播反閃族及鼓吹種族差別待遇的不當言論。大衛艾爾文有近三十部著作，其中「希特勒的戰爭」一書質疑現已被普遍認定的納粹大屠殺史實。