"Racism Report 2004" is available for free - Zara

Racism Report 2004 Cases: Public Space Page 9
Mr. K. reports that among the garden dwarfs offered at the rural market in Baden he detected two African 35
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child figures, both of them of a height of app. 1.50 metres and labelled as “assorted Negro children”. Mr. K. sees in
this offer an assault on human dignity. ZARA sends a letter of complaint to the company which is never answered.
Ms. T. reports to ZARA that her 18 year old son from Columbia was beaten up by neo-Nazis. The three 36
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thugs were arrested by the police. Ms. T. is given detailed legal advice by ZARA’s legal experts and she asks for documentation
of the incident.
Mr. S. sends an e-mail. On October 11, 2004, he witnesses a slow driving fire engine in the 9th Viennese 37
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district with a fire-fighter leaning out of the window and for no apparent reason shouting at a group of Africans:
“This is our future, you fucking nigger idiots!” Mr. S. sends a letter of complaint to the Vienna Fire Brigades and to the
Citizen Service of the City of Vienna, but so far there has been no reply from either with regard to the incident.
A witness reports to ZARA having witnessed three young men beating up a dark-skinned man so badly 38
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that he had to be taken to hospital where he needed stitches on his nose and upper lip. The witness believes it was
a racist incident. ZARA includes the case for documentation purposes.
In a mail distribution on May 5, 2004, Heinz-Christian Strache, the head of FPÖ Vienna, warns of an “inrush 39
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of Roma threatening the city of Vienna”. According to Strache the “enormous migration wave” of Roma from Eastern
European EU countries to the West was indeed an issue that needed dealing with. ZARA documents his statements
as part of our monitoring of the media.
At the end of August 2004 a discussion is started about black prostitutes working the streets around 40
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Westbahnhof in the 15th district. It is initiated by the Vienna FPÖ who rants about the fact that the City of Vienna
enables asylum seekers to work the streets legally. A neighbours’ initiative is formed at first expressing their justified
annoyance with being bothered by the punters but soon the debate is turned into an across the board racist manifestation
and it becomes clear that the whole issue is about black prostitution. Among other things the neighbours’
initiative demands that asylum seekers shouldn’t be entitled to work the streets. Rallies are organised with racist
statements such as “nigger sluts” being heard and small children being used to carry posters saying “Ban on Driving
for Punters” or “1234—Prostitutes—OUT”.
The online daily www.derstandard.at reports an incident which took place on May 29, 2004, at the 41
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Viennese theatre Rabenhof and left a member of staff of the Festival injured by a group of drunken hooligans. During
the intermission of “Heimatkunde 34” a play dealing with the events of the Austrian civil war in February 1934 and
produced especially for the Vienna Theatre Festival, four drunks start disturbing the show. According to witnesses the
attackers shouted anti-Semitic and extreme right-wing slogans and performed the Hitler salute.
In June 2004—presumably during Whitsuntide—a memorial honouring the victims of National Socialism 42
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in Villach is defiled by unknown perpetrators: 17 glass plates with the names of 64 victims, their dates of birth
and death as well as the way they were killed etched upon the glass were completely demolished. The “Memorial
of Names” erected in 1999 by the initiative “Verein Erinnern” is to honour the memory of all the women, men and
children who were murdered by the Nazis in the area of Villach between 1938 and 1945. The ombudsman of “Verein
Erinnern” suspects political motives behind the crime. And since the hardness of the glass called for a tool such as a
hammer, it is likely that the assault was planned in advance. The memorial had already been demolished once before
in March 2003 and also then the perpetrators were never found out.
ZARA is asked by the action committee “Black People in Public” to document the racist and undifferenti- 43
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ated reports concerning the issue of prostitution on “puls TV”. In the show entitled “Domestic prostitutes against black
African asylum seekers”, the word is given exclusively to Austrian prostitutes who accuse “black African prostitutes”
of behaving aggressively towards them. The show doesn’t include a single statement by a “black African prostitute”.
Mr. K. reports numerous incidents affecting his Latin American wife: On the streets she’s insulted by school 44
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children who call her “fucking nigger slut”. In the public swimming pool she is called “fucking nigger slut” and “nigger
whore”—again by school children while their teachers just look on. During a church visit with her two children
she’s thrown out of the church under shouts of “foreigners out” while her children are called “foreign brood”. Mr. K. is
told by his neighbours to “… better take his Turkish wife and get out because we don’t want no foreigners.” One day
Mr. K. parks his car in a zone restricted for loading and unloading and leaves his wife to wait for him inside the car;
when he returns 10 minutes later he comes across the following scene: A park watchwoman is hammering on the car