Susan Ladika, Chronicle Foreign Service Sunday, March 18, 2001
Vienna -- A year after Austria was ostracized by the rest of the world for including the right-wing Freedom Party in the government, the party is campaigning for next Sunday's Vienna city elections with the same anti- foreigner rhetoric that got it into trouble in the past.
Among the Freedom Party's new posters is one featuring the smiling face of Helene Partik-Pable, its mayoral candidate in Vienna. It carries the message: "Foreigners: I understand the concerns of the Viennese!"
The posters, usually placed next to billboards condemning crime and drugs, have drawn protests from human rights organizations and other political parties.
Aaron Rhodes, head of the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights, said the posters "associate foreigners with other kinds of problems. . . . They're demonizing a social group."
Rhodes complained in a letter to Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel and Vice Chancellor Susanne Riess-Passer, a Freedom Party member, that the billboards "represent an incitement to racial hatred."
The posters are reminiscent of those that the Freedom Party -- then led by Joerg Haider, controversial for statements seen as sympathetic to the Nazis -- used in Austria's last national election, in October 1999. Proclaiming "Stop Overforeignerization," they were condemned at home and abroad.
After a months-long stalemate, the Freedom Party was included in a new coalition government with the conservative Austrian People's Party in February 2000. Reaction was swift, with the other 14 European Union nations slapping diplomatic sanctions on Austria and Israel recalling its ambassador. The EU finally lifted its curbs in September.
Despite last year's outcry and the national embarrassment, the Freedom Party seems to have taken only a minor hit in popularity. It is not backing off from its anti-foreigner stance, and polls predict it will win about 22 percent of the vote next weekend, down just 6 percent from 1996.
Martin Jenmeyer, spokesman for the party's Vienna branch, said it is focusing on "topics that are important for us. We have enough (foreigners). We don't want any more immigration."
He said party members are concerned because in some areas of this city of 1. 6 million, more than one-fourth of the young people are foreigners. Many don't speak German and don't try to fit into Viennese society.
Much of the party's antipathy is directed toward Turks, who make up 20 percent of Austria's foreign population. Their olive skin and the fact many Turkish women wear head scarves make them visible and a target for hostility.
Residents from the former Yugoslavia comprise about 40 percent of the foreign-born population. Another 20 percent come from Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic.
Jenmeyer said, "We don't want people in this country who have no job and no apartment."
He is not backed up by statistics. The Organization for Economic and Cooperation and Development says unemployment among foreigners is 8.7 percent, only 1.5 percent higher than the population in general.
Jenmeyer added that the Freedom Party doesn't want Vienna to become multicultural. He cited Sarajevo, a battleground in Bosnia's three-year civil war: "Sarajevo was a multicultural society and it was destroyed."
This attitude is a far cry from Vienna's earlier days, when the city was the seat of the sprawling Austro-Hungarian Empire stretching across a dozen nations and multiculturalism was a fact of life. In 1900, more than one-third of the city's population of nearly 1.7 million was foreign born.
Almost a half-million came from within the empire, particularly present-day Czech Republic, Romania, Ukraine and Poland.
The diverse heritage of these immigrants can be seen in Vienna's street names and shop signs. Yet descendants of the Viennese of the empire era are often intolerant of newcomers, said Stefan Schennach, spokesman for the Green Party.
"The voters of the Freedom Party had grandparents who came from the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Slovenia," he said. "If you look in the telephone book, you will see this is a multicultural city. There is a great tradition of this."
Vienna's foreign population today is less than 300,000 -- less than half of what it was a century ago.
Migrants from Turkey and the former Yugoslavia started arriving in Austria and other Western European nations following World War II, when the countries' booming economies created demand for gastarbeiter (guest workers) to perform tasks unappealing to the native-born population -- such as construction, factory and domestic work.
The original plan was to welcome the workers when times were flush and send them home when things went bust. But few expected the economic boom would last until the 1970s oil crisis. By that time, many of the guest workers had been in Western Europe for two decades and had qualified for residency, preventing governments from launching widespread repatriation programs.
By actively recruiting Turks, Austria established "an ethnic nucleus, which is an attraction for others to follow," said Gudrun Biffl, an expert on migration at the Austrian Institute for Economic Research.
Biffl said most of the immigrants in the early years were young men, who paid far more into the social security system than they received in benefits. Over time, more family members arrived, making use of the health care, public education and public transportation systems.
But, in general, "the balance is always in favor of paying more into the system than getting more out," Biffl said, refuting an oft-voiced contention by the Freedom Party.
Rhodes said, "If there weren't any foreigners in Austria, the country would be in deep trouble. The economy depends on them."
Partik-Pable, the Freedom Party's mayoral candidate, has drawn criticism in the past for her comments about foreigners. The respected Der Standard newspaper reported that during a 1999 parliamentary debate on Africans, she said, "They not only look different, they are different, and in particular they are especially aggressive. That apparently is in the nature of these people."
Max Koch, spokesman for the civil rights organization S.O.S. Mitmensch, which is organizing protests against the Freedom Party, said the party has learned nothing in recent years.
"They still have the same attitude toward foreigners -- everything they do is no good. It's not good for Austria's image."
Party's Founder Criticizes Jewish Leader:
Freedom Party founder Joerg Haider, who has kept a relatively low profile in recent months, is back in the headlines again for comments about the leader of Austria's Jewish community. At a gathering last month, Haider mocked Ariel Muzicant, the lead negotiator for the Jewish community in Holocaust restitution talks.
In a reference to Muzicant's first name, which is the same as a popular laundry detergent, Haider said, "I don't understand how someone called Ariel can have so much dirt sticking to him."
In German, the phrase for "dirt sticking to him" also can mean "having skeletons in the closet."
Haider also said next Sunday's election in the capital amounts to a choice between "the heart of Vienna" -- his description of Freedom Party candidate Helene Partik-Pable -- and a Jewish "spin doctor" advising the incumbent Socialist mayor, Michael Haeupl. American campaign strategist Stanley Greenberg is working for Haeupl.
Haider, the governor of the southern province of Carinthia, also recently criticized a measure that would provide about $500 million in compensation for the thousands of Jews who lost property after the Nazi regime took power in Austria in 1938.
"There must be an end (to compensation) at some point," he said. The financial package is supported by all major Austrian political parties.
Ironically, Muzicant himself has opposed the deal, but on different grounds.
He is displeased because countless personal possessions seized from Jews during World War II will remain in the Austrian government's hands.
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