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EDITORIAL: David Irving’s sentence raises questions about benchmarks

Free Europe is not so free after all. We know it now because of David Irving, the British author who was sentenced last week to three years in an Austrian jail for violating a law that stipulates that it is a crime if a person “denies, grossly trivialises, approves or seeks to justify the National Socialist genocide or other National Socialist crimes against humanity”. Irving had famously said that “More women died in the back seat of Edward Kennedy’s car at Chappaquiddick than ever died in a gas chamber at Auschwitz”.

Irving is a “Holocaust denier”, though he does concede that nearly half-million Jews died during World War II, mostly because of disease and starvation. One could also say that his research is flawed and his facts are incorrect. In academia, lots of authors have been disgraced for plagiarism or faking research and so on. They are ostracised and most lose their jobs. It’s the same with athletes who use drugs. Many have had to lose their medals; others have had to lose the right to participate after being detected for drug use to enhance performance. But none has ever gone to jail — and rightly so. The disgrace itself is enough.

Not so in the case of the Holocaust for which Europe continues to atone. The issue is not whether Mr Irving is right or wrong. Even if he is wrong, should he go to jail for that? Furthermore, his sentence could not have come at a more unpropitious time, just as Europe is raising the flag of “free speech” to justify the publication of grossly offensive caricatures of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). The issue is also not about conflating the two incidents. It is about the touchstone of free speech. If free speech indeed means no holds barred, then Mr Irving should be a free man. That he is not makes it important to put the cartoon affair in the proper context. That context is political, just like Holocaust memory is historical and reaction to it is political. In the case of the former Europe wants to exercise its right of free speech, but in the case of the latter it wants to create an exception and has codified it through laws.

Let’s however consider the issue from another angle. It is important to have laws to prevent people from making hate statements or provoking violence. There is already enough of that happening in the world to everyone’s disadvantage. Europe cannot afford to go back to its anti-Semitic past whose shame still stands out in the existence of the word pogrom. All this is fine. But why can we not apply the same benchmark to other sensitivities involving over a billion people? If it is clear that some people — forget the Muslims — revere their prophet, should others be allowed to make fun of their beliefs, especially if it can be proved — and is clear — that such an action is based on racism and double standards? *

SDECOND EDITORIAL: President Bush’s plain-speak on South Asia

President George Bush has spoken days ahead of arriving in South Asia. On the basis of what he has said, and reading between the lines, this is what we get. Pakistan is important for the United States but India is more important. This is a fact Pakistan must know and accept. The US is deeply interested in the resolution of the Kashmir dispute and would facilitate Pakistan and India towards that end but it is essentially a bilateral issue and should be resolved bilaterally. Corollary: there is no pressure on India to go beyond getting Pakistan to accept the status quo. The US is interested in expanding bilateral trade with Pakistan and it will do so. But India is a much bigger market with much greater potential and the US companies are eyeing that market greedily. The US is also interested in signing the nuclear deal with India — something that is not available to Pakistan. So while there is pressure on both India and Pakistan for getting out of the gas deal with Iran, India gets the reward for it through the nuclear deal. Pakistan doesn’t get anything on that score.

There is much more but this should give us some idea of where Pakistan stands in the scheme of things. India interests the US very much; Pakistan needs to be kept inside the tent to ensure that it continues to behave well in the interest of all concerned parties. This approach translates into a major difference in how the US approaches India and how it wants to deal with Pakistan. This is not new; indeed it is another point on the trajectory of the US South Asia policy begun by President Bill Clinton.

What lessons must we draw from this? Should we move away from the US? We ask this because most analyses pointing to US South Asia policy and Washington’s interest in India imply that Pakistan should remove its eggs from the US basket. This is rash and not very sophisticated thinking. The United States is the only superpower and the world has to deal with it. That includes Pakistan. Also, US policy needs to be seen in the context of US interests. That invites the question of how and whether Pakistan can interest the United States. The more it can, the more it can hope to get out of Washington for its own interests.

Even so, India is too big and too important for the US to throw its weight behind Pakistan on the disputes that bedevil relations between Pakistan and India. In that area Pakistan needs to formulate policies that can pressure India. This means breaking new ground rather than sticking to the old mindset. *

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