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CRIME

EXPLAINED: What happened at the Linz Halloween riots?

On Halloween night, dozens of people, most minors, rioted in the Upper Austrian capital. Two days after the event, Austria is still trying to understand what happened and what to do now.

Published: 4 November 2022 13:56 CET
EXPLAINED: What happened at the Linz Halloween riots?
Pictured is the city of Linz, the capital of Upper Austria.

On the evening of Halloween, dozens of people rioted in Linz. Images on social media appear to show that most of them look young, and the data released by the police confirmed that. 

Among the 129 suspects identified, most (73) are younger than 18, while 26 are considered to be “young adults”, so younger than 21.

What the authorities have not been able to pinpoint, though, is what led to the rioting, which ended with damaged property, injured police officers, and almost 130 people taken into custody.

What exactly happened?

On Halloween evening, October 31st, around 200 took downtown Linz streets on a rampage, damaging storefront windows and attacking unrelated groups of people with stones and even firecrackers. 

READ ALSO: Have your say: Where are the best and worst places to live in Vienna?

As a result, some 170 police officers were called out to the scene to try to drive the rioters away, Austrian media reported. The five-hour operation resulted in nine arrests and two police officers were injured. On Tuesday evening, riots broke out again, but on a much smaller scale and the people left once police arrived.

One thing that draws attention to the episode – other than the unexpected violence – is that many of the people involved were not Austrian citizens. In a country where immigrations is always a contentious issue, this issue was bound to make the headlines.

According to the police, one in three rioters were Austrian citizens. Among the 129 identified suspects, 35 are persons entitled to asylum and five are asylum seekers. In terms of nationality, it is a heterogeneous group, according to broadcaster ORF. 

Twelve EU citizens, 28 Syrians, and 14 Afghans. Among the Austrians, the police said 34 had a “migration background” – the report didn’t clarify precisely what that meant.

Serbs, Kosovars, North Macedonians, Romanians, Thais and Bosnians were also in the group.

READ ALSO: Tents for asylum seekers stir debate in Austria

However, authorities are still investigating the incident, and there is no final report on the age or nationality of all involved.

What was the role of social media? 

The other point that ensured the riots would stay in the headlines for a while was how they came to happen. 

According to the authorities, the initial evaluation is that the event was unorganised and the rioters had no clear structure. Instead, it was more likely “a loose gathering of young people who had joined forces via social media”, Der Standard reported.

The police are now looking into several videos on TikTok, where young people announced the rioting by saying they wanted to turn Linz “into Athena”. Some videos had more than 19,000 likes and comments discussing how the night would be of “war”.

READ ALSO: IN NUMBERS: Who are the asylum seekers trying to settle in Austria?

The Athena comment references a film available on the streaming platform Netflix. The plot centres on the chaos erupting in a French neighbourhood known as Athena after the brutal killing of a child of Algerian origin. Massive riots and confrontations between the police and the population are shown.

What is going to happen now?

The police are still piecing together everything that happened two days after the riots. On social media, there are calls for further rioting (on New Year’s Eve), and xenophobic and racist comments as well, with many blaming asylum seekers and migrants for the events. 

“There’s a lot of tension in the air,” Erich Wahl of the Youth and Leisure Association (VJF), which is in charge of youth work in Linz, told Der Standard on what could have motivated the riots. 

READ ALSO: What measures against foreigners is Austria’s far-right trying to take?

Wahl mentioned that the Covid-19 crisis, inflation, and even the war in Ukraine could add to “built-up anger”, especially in young kids. Added to that, immigrants are often in a more difficult situation. 

For example, young people with Afghan, Syrian and Iraqi citizenship have a 21.9 percent unemployment rate, almost four times higher than for Austrians, the daily added.

Interior Minister Gerhard Karner (ÖVP) said the government wants to use “the full force of the law”.

Karner focused on the third-country citizens, saying their permits would be “examined” and that removal from the country could occur in serious criminal offences. 

READ ALSO: ANALYSIS: Could Austria ever change the rules to allow dual citizenship?

He added that he wanted deportations to happen also to Syria and Afghanistan, where most of the suspects were from, but mentioned that this would be in the “long-term”, as deportations to war states are not allowed under international law.

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IMMIGRATION

Border centres and ‘safe’ states: The EU’s major asylum changes explained

UPDATE: The EU parliament has adopted a sweeping reform of Europe's asylum policies that will both harden border procedures and force all the bloc's 27 nations to share responsibility.

Published: 8 April 2024 09:42 CEST
Updated: 11 April 2024 10:29 CEST
Border centres and 'safe' states: The EU's major asylum changes explained

The parliament’s main political groups overcame opposition from far-right and far-left parties to pass the new migration and asylum pact — enshrining a difficult overhaul nearly a decade in the making.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen hailed the vote, saying it will “secure European borders… while ensuring the protection of the fundamental rights” of migrants.

“We must be the ones to decide who comes to the European Union and under what circumstances, and not the smugglers and traffickers,” she said.

EU governments — a majority of which previously approved the pact — also welcomed its adoption.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Greece’s migration minister, Dimitris Kairidis, both called it “historic”.

French President Emmanuel Macron said Europe was acting “effectively and humanely” while Italian Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi hailed what he termed “the best possible compromise”.

But there was dissent when Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban derided the reform as “another nail in the coffin of the European Union”.

“Unity is dead, secure borders are no more. Hungary will never give in to the mass migration frenzy! We need a change in Brussels in order to Stop Migration!” Orban said in a post on social media platform X.

For very different reasons, migrant charities also slammed the pact, which includes building border centres to hold asylum-seekers and sending some to outside “safe” countries.

Amnesty International said the EU was “shamefully” backing a deal “they know will lead to greater human suffering” while the Red Cross federation urged member states “to guarantee humane conditions for asylum seekers and migrants affected”.

The vote itself was initially disrupted by protesters yelling: “The pact kills — vote no!”, while dozens of demonstrators outside the parliament building in Brussels held up placards with slogans decrying the reform.

The parliament’s far-left grouping, which maintains that the reforms are incompatible with Europe’s commitment to upholding human rights, said it was a “dark day”.

It was “a pact with the devil,” said Damien Careme, a lawmaker from the Greens group.

Border centres

As well as Orban, other far-right lawmakers also opposed the passage of the 10 laws making up the pact as insufficient to stop irregular migrants they accuse of spreading insecurity and threatening to “submerge” European identity.

Marine Le Pen, the figurehead of France’s far-right National Rally, complained the changes would give “legal impunity to NGOs complicit with smugglers”.

She and her party’s leader who sits in the European Parliament, Jordan Bardella, said they would seek to overturn the reform after EU elections in June, which are tipped to boost far-right numbers in the legislature.

The pact’s measures are due to come into force in 2026, after the European Commission first sets out how it would be implemented.

New border centres would hold irregular migrants while their asylum requests are vetted. And deportations of those deemed inadmissible would be sped up.

The pact also requires EU countries to take in thousands of asylum-seekers from “frontline” states such as Italy and Greece, or — if they refuse — to provide money or other resources to the under-pressure nations.

Even ahead of Orban’s broadside, his anti-immigration government reaffirmed Hungary would not be taking in any asylum-seekers.

“This new migration pact practically gives the green light to illegal migration to Europe,” Hungary’s Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said before the vote, adding that Budapest “will not allow illegal migrants to set foot here in Hungary”.

‘EU solidarity’

German’s Scholz said on X that the accord stands for “solidarity among European states” and would “finally relieve the burden on those countries that are particularly hard hit”.

One measure particularly criticised by migrant charities is the sending of asylum-seekers to countries outside the EU deemed “safe”, if the migrant has sufficient ties to that country.

The pact resulted from years of arduous negotiations spurred by a massive inflow of irregular migrants in 2015, many from war-torn Syria and Afghanistan.

Under current EU rules, the arrival country bears responsibility for hosting and vetting asylum-seekers and returning those deemed inadmissible. That has put southern frontline states under pressure and fuelled far-right opposition.

A political breakthrough came in December when a weighted majority of EU countries backed the reforms — overcoming opposition from Hungary and Poland.

In parallel with the reform, the EU has been multiplying the same sort of deal it struck with Turkey in 2016 to stem migratory flows.

It has reached accords with Tunisia and, most recently, Egypt that are portrayed as broader cooperation arrangements. Many lawmakers have, however, criticised the deals.

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