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REFUGEE CRISIS

IMMIGRATION

Efforts to improve ‘inhumane’ camp

Austria’s main refugee processing centre has stopped taking in any new asylum seekers from Wednesday as conditions at the severely overcrowded camp currently pose a health risk and the government is worried about an epidemic breaking out.

Efforts to improve 'inhumane' camp
Asylum seekers sleeping in the grounds of Traiskirchen. Photo: ORF

A health check and initial administrative steps for new asylum seekers will still be carried out at the Traiskirchen centre in Lower Austria, but they will then be sent on to accommodation in Austria’s other provinces.

Human rights group Amnesty International is due to inspect the camp on Thursday, and hurried efforts have been made to clear rubbish and improve hygiene facilities.

Last week the UN described conditions at the camp as “dangerous and inhumane”. The camp is designed to hold a maximum of 1,800 people but currently houses more than twice as many, around 4,000 refugees.

Nearly half of them do not have a bed and are sleeping in corridors, and under tarpaulins and tents outdoors. Many of the refugees sleeping outside are women and young children.

Austria, a country of 8.5 million people, received more than 28,000 asylum requests in 2014, three times the European average relative to population size.

It expects at least 75,000 asylum seekers to arrive by the end of this year, with a majority coming via Serbia and Hungary – the so-called ‘Balkan route’.

Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner said that currently around 1,600 beds are needed per week for new asylum seekers, and that the situation at Traiskirchen has become “unsustainable”.

She added that the provinces have made “a great effort in recent weeks to create new quarters for refugees fleeing from war, but that more refugees are arriving than we can accommodate in the short term”.

She said the government will be supporting the provinces as best as it can by opening up police quarters and cells and setting up new tent camps and containers. The Red Cross has said it can provide an additional 500 beds.

The entire European Union is struggling to cope with a huge influx of refugees, many risking their lives to flee violence in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Almost 185,000 applied for asylum in the first quarter alone – a rise of 86 percent according to EU statistics agency Eurostat.

FAR-RIGHT

Germany issues entry ban to Austrian far-right activist Sellner

Radical Austrian nationalist Martin Sellner has been banned from entering Germany, it emerged on Tuesday, days after he was deported from Switzerland.

Germany issues entry ban to Austrian far-right activist Sellner

Sellner, a leader of Austria’s white pride Identitarian Movement, posted a video of himself on X, formerly Twitter, reading out a letter he said was from the city of Potsdam.

A spokeswoman for the city authorities confirmed to AFP that an EU citizen had been served with a “ban on their freedom of movement in Germany”.

The person can no longer enter or stay in Germany “with immediate effect” and could be stopped by police or deported if they try to enter the country, the spokeswoman said, declining to name the individual for privacy reasons.

READ ALSO: Who is Austria’s far-right figurehead banned across Europe?

“We have to show that the state is not powerless and will use its legitimate means,” Mike Schubert, the mayor of Potsdam, said in a statement.

Sellner caused an uproar in Germany after allegedly discussing the Identitarian concept of “remigration” with members of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) at a meeting in Potsdam in November.

Reports of the meeting sparked a huge wave of protests against the AfD, with tens of thousands of Germans attending demonstrations across the country.

READ ALSO:

Swiss police said Sunday they had prevented a hundred-strong far-right gathering due to be addressed by Sellner, adding that he had been arrested and deported.

The Saturday meeting had been organised by the far-right Junge Tat group, known for its anti-immigration and anti-Islamic views.

The group is also a proponent of the far-right white nationalist Great Replacement conspiracy theory espoused by Sellner’s Identitarian Movement.

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