Europe's news in English

COPY LINK

POLICE

Police aim to recruit more ethnic minorities

Austrian police are stepping up efforts to recruit more people from ethnic minorities to join the force.

Published: 18 May 2015 12:41 CEST

Police aim to recruit more ethnic minorities

The Islamic Centre in Floridsdorf. Photo: wien-vienna.at

According to the Kronen Zeitung newspaper the aim of the recruitment drive is to make sure police officers have a better cultural understanding of the increasing number of Austrians who have a migrant background, and to shake off a reputation for discrimination and racism.

For the first time the police have even been promoting the force within an Islamic centre in Vienna.

There are almost 600,000 Muslims living in Austria, and more than 200,000 live in Vienna – a population trend which is expected to grow. However, only about three percent of police officers are Muslims.

“The general objective is, that the police force should end up reflecting our society. This is a program which has been around for a while,” a statement from the office of Vienna Integration City Councillor Sandra Frauenberger read.

It’s believed that Muslim police officers will find it easier to gain acceptance and trust within Muslim communities.

Police and representatives from the Integration Department recently held an event at Vienna’s Islamic Centre in Floridsdorf.

However, the chairman of the Turkish cultural community, Birol Kilic felt that it was wrong to target mosques as part of the recruitment drive. “They should leave the real prayer houses in peace and should be advertising in schools… They don’t go to churches to try and recruit more ‘Christian’ youths. I find it rather questionable,” he said.

How widespread is racism in Austria?

At first glance, the statistics look encouraging. Just over 1,300 incidents with a racist motive were reported to the Austrian non-government organisation ZARA last year – a drop from just under 1,500 reported the previous year and half as many as 2020 when a record 3,000 racist incidents were reported.

The spike in incidents from 2020 is thought to be connected to people spending more time online in the first pandemic year and due to the issue being in the public eye as part of the Black Lives Matter movement sparked after the death of George Floyd at the hands of police in the US.

However, Rita Isiba, who heads up ZARA, warned that many cases go undetected because some victims fear the wider implications of reporting offences.

During the presentation on Wednesday of the new report into racism and discrimination, Isiba said racism is part of everyday life in Austria for people of colour and is not an individual problem, but a social one.

The report shows “how deeply rooted racism still is in many areas of life in Austria”, Isiba said.

Particularly in the education system, the healthcare system, when in contact with the police and the workplace, there is clear racism and discrimination, the report found.

ZARA provided 1,708 counselling appointments to victims when racism was reported, and took legal measures or other interventions 702 times.

READ ALSO: Muslims and black people discriminated against in Austria, report reveals

Where is racism happening in Austria?

Of the 1,302 reports documented by ZARA in 2023, 58 percent concerned racist incidents online. But researchers pointed out that there can be a blurry line between online incidents and in-person incidents.

Head of the counselling centres, Fiorentina Azizi-Hacker mentioned one example of a black woman contacting ZARA because she had been subjected to racist and sexist insults as well as threats by her online dating contact.

After she said she was not interested in meeting up again after the first date, he bombarded her with messages in which he threatened to sexually assault her daughter, among other things.

The office attributed 15.9 percent of cases to the “public sphere”, 11 percent to incidents involving “goods and services”, 8.4 percent to state authorities and institutions, 4.5 percent to the police, 1.6 percent to politics and the media and 0.4 percent to the world of work. Formal complaints were only lodged in four out of 58 cases of alleged racist police violence.

It comes after a report released by the European Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) found Austria and Germany were among the worst EU countries for racism.

A total of 76 percent of respondents in Germany and 72 percent in Austria reported experiencing discrimination in the past five years due to their skin colour, origin, or religion.

READ ALSO: Austria ranks among ‘worst’ EU countries for racism

Language ‘bans’ at school

The anti-discrimination organisation ZARA slammed the system around Austria’s so-called German support classes or Deutschförderklassen.

Teacher Ali Dönmez said the issue is that pupils are segregated based on their language skills and the MIKA-D test required for categorisation places too much importance on grammar.

Dönmez pointed out that the way Austrian schools deal with multilingualism is generally a problem. He described several cases where children and young people were forbidden to speak Turkish or Arabic or were even penalised for doing so.

But younger people are often afraid to report the problems in case teachers are informed.

“There is a legitimate concern that the situation will get worse if they report it,” said Dönmez.

Austrian government shelves racism action plan

ZARA’s Rita Isiba issued fresh calls for the Austrian government to kick start its National Action Plan against Racism (NAP).

However, it has emerged that the coalition government – made up of the Greens and Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) has shelved it.

When Social Affairs Minister Johannes Rauch (Greens) was asked about the NAP, he said the government “won’t get round to it” before the election later this year, reported the Kurier.

According to Austrian broadcaster ORF, Rauch said the responsibility for the plan lay with Integration and Women’s Affairs Minister Susanne Raab (ÖVP).

“We would like to see much more speed in the creation and coordination of this plan,” said Rauch, criticising his coalition partners. The Green ministries had “done their homework and have already taken important measures in their areas of responsibility”, said Rauch.

Isiba said their agency would “continue to work to bring Austria closer to a society that is critical of racism”, when asked about the cancelled plan. “If we don’t have the support of politicians, we at least have the support of private individuals and companies.”

READ ALSO: Austrian study shows discrimination against foreigners in the housing market

Url copied to clipboard!