Image: Wolfgang Spitzbart
Two young people are in custody in St. Pölten after a possibly planned Islamist attack on the rainbow parade on Saturday in Vienna. The parade itself was uneventful, but in the evening a woman was beaten in downtown Vienna. The thugs are said to have previously made homophobic comments. There are no current figures on hate crimes based on sexual orientation; in 2021, 376 such cases were recorded by the police in Austria.
So-called hate crimes have only been recorded in Austria since 2020. In 2021 there were 5,464 bias-motivated crimes and 6,619 bias-motives and 2,091 victims. 2,052 offenses fell into the belief category, followed by national/ethnic origin (1,874), religion (750), skin color (408), sexual orientation (376), gender (354), social status (287), age (266) and Disability (252), according to the 2021 Hate Crime Annual Report. The report for the year 2022 will only be published around July 22, the “day of action for those affected by hate crime”, the Interior Ministry informed on APA request on Monday.
Homophobic and misogynistic
According to the 2021 report, “sexual orientation” was dominated by homophobic motives, and gender by misogyny. In 2021 there were 376 police-registered bias motives “sexual orientation”. A good two-thirds of these were confrontational crimes such as damage to property, bodily harm, dangerous threats or coercion. The crimes were mostly committed in public.
The police registered 199 violent crimes related to “sexual orientation” and identified 224 victims and 304 suspects. The majority related to homosexuality with 299 prejudice motives. In addition, 354 prejudice motives regarding gender were registered, the majority related to women with 275, followed by divers/inter with 39 cases.
Since August 2020, the police have been comprehensively trained in recognizing and recording prejudice motives. On November 1, 2020, the “Motive” tab was activated to record them according to victim groups in the police logging program. The entered data is transmitted to the judiciary via a specially created interface using “Electronic Legal Communication (ERV)”.
An LGBTIQ+ health report was first published in Austria at the beginning of June. According to this, almost nine out of ten queer people in Austria have been confronted with discrimination in recent years. Of the 89 percent who experienced discrimination, three quarters attributed it to their sexual orientation. 54 percent stated that they had also experienced disadvantages in the health sector. Experiences range from inappropriate comments and insults to pressure to undergo certain treatments.
Source: Nachrichten
