Photo: CAGE+ACTP report
Hamed Chapman
One year after the controversial Operational Luxur raids, the Austrian Government is being urged to end the “extraordinary means and state surveillance” of the country’s Muslim community.
“The moves to augment counter-terrorism in Austria since the November 2020 attacks can be seen, in part, as a classic exercise in scapegoating – to mask the Government’s failure to prevent the attacks,” according to a new report by CAGE, an advocacy organisation, and Austria-based NGO, Assisting Children Traumatised by Police.
Last November, the Austrian Government carried out one of the country’s largest police operations, raiding some 70 homes simultaneously and detaining 30 Muslim activists and academics.The raids were conducted as part of Operation Luxor but by the beginning of August 2021, the Higher Regional Court of Graz city “vindicated survivors” of the raids, by declaring the police’s actions, under jurisdiction of Nehammer, were unlawful, the report found.
“Among a series of violations conducted by the state in this operation, the judgment also noted that the manner in which the cases had been managed violated the survivors’ right to a fair trial,” it said “None of the victims, whose lives were turned upside down after the operation, have been charged with any crime,” said the report, entitled A Community Persecuted: A Year On From Operation Luxor, which investigated the operation and practices of the Austrian Government.
The Government has taken a variety of steps under the guise of combatting so-called “political Islam,” including mosque closures, hijab bans, and proposed “Sharia bans,” it said, claiming the Government of Sebastian Kurz “sought to exploit Daesh/ISIS attacks in Vienna to target its Muslim population.”
“The most chilling example of Austria’s overarching policy of guilt-by-association and targeting of Muslims was unveiled on 29 May 2021 when the Documentation Centre, together with Integration minister Raab introduced the so-called “Islam Map” via a press conference.”
The map charts over 600 Muslim and ‘Muslim-marked’ organisations, associations, charities and identified their locations and included publishing home addresses and the origins and ideologies of Muslim associations, their structures and networks, and connections abroad within the framework described as “flawed”
The Map was said to have “effectively invited Islamophobic attacks on Austria’s Muslims, and marked them out as hyper salient in Austrian society. Following its publication a number of listed institutions were reportedly attacked by Neo Nazis.
The report also criticises the role of the media in legitimising the actions of the Austrian state, saying basic journalistic ethics should require journalists and editors to very critically scrutinise the role of authorities “yet the Austrian media have been very deliberately amplifying and spreading a misleading and dangerous narrative.”
It calls for the political leadership in Austria, especially the Minister of Interior and the Minister of Justice, to “appoint an independent investigative commission to investigate Operation Luxor and issue its findings.”
“All open investigations against victims of the Operation Luxor raids must be dropped and the victims have to be fully vindicated by due process, especially after the higher regional court declaring Operation Luxor as unlawful,” it also added.
