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CRIME

FACT CHECK: Is crime really on the rise in Vienna?

The far-right in Austria often claims crime is on the rise and tries to connect that with the rising numbers of migrants. But how valid is this claim? Here is the latest data from the Vienna police.

Published: 6 March 2023 16:13 CET
FACT CHECK: Is crime really on the rise in Vienna?
Police cars stand in front of Schoenbrunn Palace on February 14, 2023. (Photo by Alex HALADA / AFP)

Austria is a very safe country to live in, having one of the lowest crime rates in the world. However, if you pay attention to politicians’ speeches, especially those from the far-right, you might get a different picture. 

“The wave of foreign violence does not subside in Austria”, reads a far-right press release from January 2023, when two cases involving foreign citizens made headlines in Austria. At the time, a Polish man was arrested suspected of murdering a young mother in Vienna, and an Iraqi citizen allegedly stabbed his partner in Linz. 

Far-right leader Michael Schnedlitz wrote: “The reports are shocking and the result of the decades-long failure of the ÖVP in asylum and immigration policy. These events make us speechless. How many more people are to lose their lives before the black-green federal government finally acts?”

The party added: “Decades of ÖVP failure make Austria an increasingly unsafe place to live”, calling for the ruling coalition to curb migration in the country, particularly to the capital Vienna.

READ ALSO: EXPLAINED: What happened at the Linz Halloween riots?

But is crime really on the rise in Vienna? 

A recent report by the Vienna State Police Directorate (Landespolizeidirektion) showed the crime trends in Vienna with statistics for 2022. 

According to the police, after declining in the two pandemic years of 2020 and 2021, criminal offences increased 16.7 percent for the year 2022, totalling 168,303 offences.

However, overall crime remained below the level recorded in 2019, when 173,574 offences were registered. In 2013, before the migration crisis and when the Austrian population was smaller, there were 212,503 criminal offences filed.

READ ALSO: What happens if you get arrested in Austria?

The most common type of crime in Vienna is “property crime” including theft, pickpocketing, and burglaries. According to the police, the number of residential burglaries increased by 42.9 percent from 2021 to 2022, totalling 2,873 cases. In comparison, in 2019, there were 4,135 reports, while in 2013, there were 8,703.

In 2022, about 52.9 percent of the suspects investigated were of foreign origin, a proportion 33.7 percent higher than in 2013. By the end of 2022, about 34.3 percent of Vienna’s population was foreign citizens, according to Statistik Austria.

The Viennese police did not give information on how many foreigners were arrested and how many were found guilty.

What are the police doing to combat crime?

The Vienna Police Department said it would further intensify the presence of uniformed and civilian law enforcement officers in public spaces and continue “investigative measures to prevent clashes between ethnic groups and to solve crimes”.

The police report didn’t specify instances of “clashes between ethnic groups”, but it did say the number of violent crimes increased 13.7 percent year on year in 2022, to 27,240. However, the majority (56.9 percent) of the violent crimes committed were preceded by a relationship between the offender and the victim.

READ ALSO: Austrian police warn public about new ‘fake cops’ scam

“Furthermore, investigations into pickpocketing, narcotics procurement crime and gang crime are being further intensified.”, the police headquarters added.

Finally, the authorities also said that the focus would continue to be combating cybercrime and stepping up prevention work. In 2022, cybercrime rose sharply again in Vienna. Within the past ten years, the number of reported offences increased from 3,390 in 2013 to 22,230 in 2022.

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VIENNA

Vienna Festival director Milo Rau hits back at anti-Semitism accusations

One of the latest events in Europe to be hit with accusations of anti-Semitism, the Vienna Festival kicks off Friday, with its new director, Milo Rau, urging that places of culture be kept free of the "antagonism" of the Israel-Hamas war while still tackling difficult issues.

Published: 17 May 2024 14:48 CEST
Vienna Festival director Milo Rau hits back at anti-Semitism accusations

As the conflict in Gaza sharply polarises opinion, “we must be inflexible” in defending the free exchange of ideas and opinions, the acclaimed Swiss director told AFP in an interview this week.

“I’m not going to take a step aside… If we let the antagonism of the war and of our society seep into our cultural and academic institutions, we will have completely lost,” said the 47-year-old, who will inaugurate the Wiener Festwochen, a festival of theatre, concerts, opera, film and lectures that runs until June 23rd in the Austrian capital and that has taken on a more political turn under his tenure.

The Swiss director has made his name as a provocateur, whether travelling to Moscow to stage a re-enactment of the trial of Russian protest punk band Pussy Riot, using children to play out the story of notorious Belgian paedophile Marc Dutroux, or trying to recruit Islamic State jihadists as actors.

Completely ridiculous 

The Vienna Festival has angered Austria’s conservative-led government — which is close to Israel — by inviting Greek former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis and French Nobel Prize winner for literature Annie Ernaux, both considered too critical of Israel.

A speech ahead of the festival on Judenplatz (Jews’ Square) by Israeli-German philosopher Omri Boehm — who has called for replacing Israel with a bi-national state for Arabs and Jews —  also made noise.

“Who will be left to invite?  Every day, there are around ten articles accusing us of being anti-Semitic, saying that our flag looks like the Palestinian flag, completely ridiculous things,” Rau said, as he worked from a giant bed which has been especially designed by art students and installed at the festival office.

Hamas’ bloody October 7th assault on southern Israel and the devastating Israeli response have stoked existing rancour over the Middle East conflict between two diametrically opposed camps in Europe.

In this climate, “listening to the other side is already treachery,” lamented the artistic director.

“Wars begin in this impossibility of listening, and I find it sad that we Europeans are repeating war at our level,” he said.

As head of also the NTGent theatre in the Belgian city of Ghent, he adds his time currently “is divided between a pro-Palestinian country and a pro-Israeli country,” or between “colonial guilt” in Belgium and “genocide guilt” in Austria, Adolf Hitler’s birthplace.

Institutional revolution

The “Free Republic of Vienna” will be proclaimed on Friday as this year’s Vienna Festival celebrates. according to Rau, “a second modernism, democratic, open to the world” in the city of the father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, and artist and symbolist master Gustav Klimt.

Some 50,000 people are expected to attend the opening ceremony on the square in front of Vienna’s majestic neo-Gothic town hall.

With Rau describing it as an “institutional revolution” and unlike any other festival in Europe, the republic has its own anthem, its own flag and a council made up of Viennese citizens, as well as honorary members, including Varoufakis and Ernaux, who will participate virtually in the debates.

The republic will also have show trials — with real lawyers, judges and politicians participating — on three weekends.

Though there won’t be any verdicts, Rau himself will be in the dock to embody “the elitist art system”, followed by the republic of Austria and finally by the anti-immigrant far-right Freedom Party (FPOe), which leads polls in the Alpine EU member ahead of September national elections.

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