-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Austria found guilty of ill-treatment of Immigration detainees
Date: Sat, 25 Mar 2000 14:46:10 +0000
From: John O <[log in to unmask]>
To: Recipient List Suppressed:;
Rampant racism against Immigration detainees by Austrian police exposed
Black detainees kicked, beaten and punched, says Amnesty
Kate Connolly in Vienna: Saturday March 25, 2000
Austrian police have been accused of seriously flouting human
rights, abusing their powers and using brutal language and behaviour
in their treatment of foreigners, in a report released by Amnesty
International in Vienna yesterday.
The damning account said a strong inbuilt racism existed within
the police force.
Amnesty Austria members called on the government to establish
race education programmes from primary school level "so that children
learn a human rights conscience from a young age".
The report, based on the recommendations of the UN committee
against torture, detailed eyewitness accounts and medical reports of
detainees being kicked, punched, beaten with truncheons and sprayed
with pepper.
"Austria is not a torture state, but nevertheless a state that
has certainly fallen far short of European Union human rights
recommendations," said the general secretary of Amnesty International
Austria, Heinz Patzelt.
The report was published on the same day as a 31-year-old police
officer appeared before a Vienna court charged with grevious bodily
harm over the beating of a young black African man.
The policeman is alleged to have hit the 18-year-old around the
genitals with a baseball bat before arresting him in
September last year on suspicion of drugs possession. The judge
adjourned the trial indefinitely, for more evidence.
The Amnesty report said detainees were often denied access to
lawyers, doctors or friends, and foreigners, particularly black
Africans, had been beaten unconscious for not showing police their
papers.
The allegations could hardly have come at a worse time for Austria,
which has been isolated on the international stage for almost two
months since the anti-immigration far-right Freedom party entered the
government in a coalition with the conservatives.
A spokesman for the interior ministry said it had already begun to
look into the Amnesty charges. "All the allegations will be examined,
to see if any judicial and disciplinary measures should be taken," he
said.
The focal point of Amnesty's allegations is the case of Marcus
Omofuma, a Nigerian asylum seeker, 25, who died while being deported
from Vienna to Sofia in May last year. He was bound and gagged "like
a mummy stuck to the seat" by the three officers who accompanied him,
and arrived unconscious in Sofia where doctors pronounced him dead.
No charges were brought.
"Investigations into police ill-treatment have been slow, lacking
in thoroughness and often inconclusive," said Mr Patzelt. Often, when
complaints were made, the police brought counter-charges and more
often than not won.
Illegal raids on asylum homes were also being regularly reported,
he said, citing an incident which occurred after the report was
completed, in January this year, when police raided the home of black
Africans in Traiskirchen.
"One hundred and forty police stormed the home looking for drugs
but nothing was found," he said. "They then carried out painful anal
searches, simply because there was some suspicion that there might be
drugs there. All you need is a black face to be considered
suspicious."
The report covers incidents that happened before the current
government was sworn in. But human rights organisations fear that the
rise of the far right has given expression to passive racism in
Austria.
In what is being seen as a timely move, the EU has chosen to base
its new racism monitoring centre in Vienna. "It wasn't placed here
because Austria is seen as being racist," insisted EU spokesman John
Kellock, "but if it steps out of line, we'll haul them over the
coals."
The Freedom party and People's party are the only government
parties in the EU not to have signed up to the EU's charter against
racism because their policies contravene some of the clauses.
Fears that intolerance is on the rise in Austria increased this
week when the head of the evangelical church, Bishop Gertraud Knoll,
said she was going into hiding with her three children because she
could no longer stand the violent and sexually abusive letters
delivered to her home in Burgenland.
Bishop Knoll, 41, has been a staunch critic of the Freedom party
and its racist politics for years.
Kate Connolly: Electronic Guardian Saturday 25 march 2000
----------------------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------
Amnesty International Press Release 24 March 2000
Austria: Incidents of police brutality against Immigration
detainees continue
The Austrian authorities continue to ignore serious incidents of
police brutality and have failed to end the ill-treatment of
detainees, Amnesty International said in a report launched in Vienna
today ( Austria before the UN Committee against Torture: allegations
of police ill-treatment. AI Index: EUR 13/001/00).
Supported by eyewitness reports and medical evidence, detainees have
reported being repeatedly kicked, punched, kneed, beaten with
truncheons and sprayed with pepper after restraint. The
victims are mostly non-white foreign or Austrian nationals and in
many cases police are alleged to have used racist language.
In May last year, a 25-year-old Nigerian asylum-seeker, Marcus
Omofuma, was deported by three police officers from Vienna airport.
On the aeroplane, he was allegedly gagged and bound 'like
a mummy stuck to the seat' with adhesive tape. He did not survive the
journey.
In November 1998, Dr C, a black Austrian citizen, was stopped by
police after reversing his car into a one-way street and was asked
"Why are you driving the wrong way, Nigger?" The police
officers reportedly pushed Dr C into a bush of thorns, beat him
unconscious, handcuffed him and continued to beat him after he
regained consciousness. Dr C's wife claims one of the police
officers shouted to his colleague; "Make him lame until he can no
longer walk". After being arrested, Dr C was so badly beaten, he was
taken to hospital where he spent 11 days recovering.
"Investigations into police ill-treatment have been slow, lacking in
thoroughness and often inconclusive. In the 1998 - 1999 period very
few perpetrators of human rights violations were brought
to justice. To add insult to injury, counter-charges such as
resisting arrest, physical assault or defamation were often brought
against detainees who lodged complaints of ill- treatment against
police officers," Amnesty International said.
Police officers entered a Chinese restaurant in July 1998 and
demanded identity papers from employees. The cook, a Chinese
national, was reportedly dragged out of the kitchen, beaten and put
into a headlock for not producing his papers. One of the waitresses,
He Xiuzhen, tried to intervene and was pinned to the ground and hit
on the breast. In self-defence she tried to attack the
police officer with her shoe but he allegedly beat her with her other
shoe. Another waitress involved in the incident, He Xiuqin, later
lodged a complaint as did the police officers who complained
of physical assault and resisting arrest, as a result of which the
three detainees received suspended prison sentences.
In November last year the UN Committee against Torture reviewed
Austria's Second Periodic Report to the Committee describing the
measures it had taken to implement its obligations under
the Convention against Torture. The Committee recommended that police
be held to account for violations of human rights and they receive a
clear message that abuse of power will not be
tolerated.
Amnesty International believes that perpetrators of human rights
violations are likely to become all the more confident when they are
not held to account before the law. The organization is
renewing its calls on the new Austrian government to seriously
address the abuse of police powers by promptly and thoroughly
investigating all incidents of ill-treatment, address racism in the
police force, send a clear message to police that ill-treatment is
unacceptable, and punish the perpetrators.
"The image of a brutal and sometimes racist police force is an ugly
one. The Austrian government faces major embarassment in Europe and
abroad if it allows rogue police officers to beat
people up and get away with it," Amnesty International warned.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L
Web interface at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
