Topic: Activists under Pressure in Austria (Read 509 times)

That may be part of the problem, but it is apparent the police (of Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz) cracks down much harder on animal rights protests (for instance one incident of a peaceful protest in front of the Canadian embassy against slaughter of seals which was deemed so much danger to the constitution that more police than activists was present and they would have arrested the activists if the media hadn't been present) than they do on right-wing groups (or I guess also left-wing groups for the matter), which are usually indeed at least somewhat violent.

In any case, no matter what their reason really is, it is no development I want to see for a demcratic society....

That may be the case for some individual activists / groups, but it certainly is not the case for the groups targetted now in these actions.  Recently some of the businesses opposed to the animal activists even "complained" that the activists usually know that much about the law to not commit any felony punishable by criminal law at all (and so they need other strategies to get rid of them).  It is not about actual crimes being committed, but trying to invent something in order to have leverage against "unpleasant" activism.


Yep, that's well put.

The problem is:

1.We have very unclear laws in Austria - not just about 'terrorism'.

2.There is the so called 'Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz und Terrorismusbekämpfung' for counter-terrorism, but we don't really have actual terrorist attacks* here, so they're probably trying to find some innocent people to avoid losing their jobs.  

*Austria has a very low homicide rate, AFAIR it was one of the lowest in the EU.

Just to put this in a larger context, animal rights groups/activists have been loosely aligned with eco-terrorists of various flavors since the 1980s, and some of these have caused considerable property damage, if not deaths.  So there might be something...or someones in particular...that the powers that be had reason to be closely monitoring.

I don't know anything, really about European or Austrian politics, but from what you have said it seems that government reactions went way, way overboard.

I would be interested what the Bitcoin community thinks about recent (and not-so-recent) developments in Austria with respect to activism (and in particular, animal-rights activists).  In principle, we Austrians see our country as "free" and "democratic", but since I got a little more involved in these subjects, I'm no longer any confident (much like a lot of people write here about the US).  For instance, the "Tierschutzcausa" (see http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jul/18/animalwelfare.animalbehaviour or https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tierschutzprozess (in German)).  Activists were persecuted for colluding in a criminal organisation for legal protests and some acts of crime, which - as they found out later - were not committed by them.  They were initially arrested with massive police raids on their homes, were spied upon to great lengths before that, and some 10 millions of Euros of tax payer money was wasted on the persecution.  In 2011, all charges were dropped.  However, the judge who did that was removed from her post, and instead the persecutor got promoted (in Austria, in particular one major political party is heavily related to industry owners (including who earn their money on animal products or by selling fur clothing), owners of big agriculture businesses and (part-time, for fun) hunters).

Furthermore, the Austrian institution for protection of the constitution devotes a lot of space in its annual report to "extremist animal rights groups" - and because there was not a single crime to report about, they instead listed charges like wrong parking at legal demonstrations, instead of simply not pretending that the particular animal rights group in question (the VgT) was a danger to the constitution.  In fact, it can be argued that the merciless (and baseless) persecution of legal demonstrations as well as heavy police presence in particular for animal rights protests in itself is danger to the constitutional rights of free speech and expression, as well as demonstrations protected by the constitution.

Now the highest appeal court ruled that some of the actions had been coercion:  Namely to let businesses know of (legal!) planned campaings informing their customer about (truthful) facts relating to their business.  The logic is like this:  By informing the customers, they might not any longer want to buy at that particular business, hurting its profits.  Thus by using this to "pressure" the business into not selling fur any more (or whatever else you want from it), you commit an act of coercion according to Austrian law.  This is a completely wrong ruling and surely against the spirit of the law as seen by the broad majority of the population.  In fact, if that was indeed true, it would open the door widely for anyone to persecute any NGO which is unpleasant to one's interests, turning the democracy into a police state.  See http://www.vgt.at/ for a lot of news about that.

In response, there's now a bid to charge oneself with coercion because of legal protest actions taken, in order to show how insane this understanding of the law is.  Already more than 900 curageous citizens submitted it, it will be interesting to see what the general persecution does on this.  However, I really have to admit that I was shocked to notice how I hesitated in supporting that bid because of fear for the consequences ... and precisely such fear (despite being in a nominal "democracy") is what the ruling elite wants to achieve in order to discourage the general population from claiming their rights in a supposedly "free" society.

What do you think about that developments?

BTW, I already asked the VgT whether or not they would want to start accepting BTC donations.  (Which I would love to give.)  So far no response, though.