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Outrage in Austria over ninth woman is murdered in 2021

The ninth killing of a woman in Austria this year sparked outrage and promises of action from the government on Friday, with the latest victim a 35-year-old mother of two.

Published: 1 May 2021 08:42 CEST

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The city hall in Vienna with two screens projecting hygiene measures to curb the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic on April 12, 2021. JOE KLAMAR / AFP

The woman died after being shot late on Thursday in a northern district of the capital Vienna, prompting the interior ministry to announce a summit next week to discuss ways of addressing the spate of killings of women by their ex-partners.

Police confirmed to AFP that a 42-year-old man had been arrested on suspicion of committing the murder with a handgun.

According to Austrian media, the suspect in the latest murder is a man who hit headlines in 2018 when a Green politician Sigrid Maurer accused him of sending her obscene Facebook messages.

Maurer said she had gone public with the case in order to draw attention to the problem of online harassment.

The man denied writing the messages, saying they had been written by someone else from a computer used by customers at the bar he runs and sued Maurer for defamation.

A court ruling backed him, saying that Maurer should have taken more care to establish whether he really did write the messages.

But the man later dropped the complaint, with Maurer being exonerated.

The case drew much attention in Austria with the initial decision against Maurer being condemned by feminist activists and others.

READ ALSO: Man held after homemade bomb leaves his ex-wife with serious burns

On Friday, Maurer said that “the fact that it seems the culprit was the bar owner is personally shocking to me”.

Women’s Minister Susanne Raab was one of many other politicians to react to Thursday’s “shocking murder”, saying she was “profoundly saddened”.

Green Transport Minister Leonore Gewessler was visibly moved as she called for more action on the issue at a press conference.

Austrian media have been raising the alarm over high levels of femicide, with 31 killings of women in 2020.

One of the country’s most important news weeklies, Profil, devoted an issue to the subject recently and cited Eurostat figures showing that Austria was the only country in which more women than men were victims of violent crime.

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Does Austria have a drug problem?

Police in the Austrian capital, Vienna, this week received a special nasal spray used as an antidote for opioid overdose. It’s now part of the force’s first aid kits, as Austrian media reported.

The spray is used as an antidote for poisoning with opioids such as fentanyl and is part of the standard equipment of US police units. In Austria, the departments specialising in combating drugs will now also receive the spray vials, the Ministry of the Interior confirmed.

Fentanyl is considered to be around 50 times stronger than heroin, and unintentional contact can have serious consequences – including respiratory arrest. “Inhaling large quantities is particularly dangerous,” the ministry said, according to the Der Standard report. However, skin contact can also pose a risk under certain circumstances.

READ ALSO: Is cannabis legal in Austria?

The situation in Austria is different to that in the USA, as Daniel Lichtenegger, Drug Coordinator at the Ministry of the Interior and Head of the Central Office for Combating Drug-Related Crime at the Federal Criminal Police Office, explained to the newspaper. “But of course, we want to be prepared so we don’t lag behind.”

What is the situation in Austria?

In the USA, which is plagued by the opioid crisis, the drug is now the most common cause of death for people between the ages of 18 and 49. Drugs like fentanyl are estimated to kill around 70,000 Americans every year. But what is the situation in Austria?

The latest data from the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) reveals the prevalence of drug overdoses across the EU, highlighting the significant role of opioids.

While around 6,400 drug-related deaths were estimated in the EU in 2022, the report notes this figure is likely an underestimation due to incomplete data from several countries.

According to the available data, opioids, often combined with other substances, were the leading cause of drug-induced fatalities in the EU, accounting for over three-quarters of such cases in 2022. This issue is particularly pronounced in Austria, where opioids were implicated in 92 percent of reported drug-related deaths.

The country is only behind Denmark (94 percent) and tied with Bulgaria (92 percent). All other European countries where there is available data have fewer than 90 percent of drug-related deaths connected to opioids.

READ ALSO: Do foreigners in Austria have to carry ID?

When it comes to drug-related deaths per million people aged 15-64, Austria’s numbers are still worrying, but not the highest in the European Union (plus Norway and Turkey). Here, Ireland has the deadliest drug problem (97 deaths per million people), followed by Estonia (95) and Norway (86).

Earlier this year, the Health Ministry sounded the alarm in Austria, when it posted a report showing an increase in fatal overdoses and in the proportion of young deaths.

Around 35,000 to 40,000 people in Austria are addicted to opioids. According to the report, opioid addiction mainly affects men (three quarters), people aged 25 and over (around 90 percent) and those living in urban areas.

As the report shows, almost half of those addicted to opioids live in Vienna, where 101 directly related deaths were recorded in 2021 (Vienna figures for 2022 were not available in the report).

This makes Vienna the leader in a comparison of federal states and has reached a peak since measurements began in 2003. In 2020, 74 people died from drug overdoses in the federal capital.

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