Federal President Alexander Van der Bellen (78) expressed his “deep dismay” about the assassination attempt on Salman Rushdie in New York. The well-intentioned words are not quite as well liked on the web: Van der Bellen is reproached for his friendliness to the Iranian regime. As is well known, the Iranians had imposed the death fatwa against Rushdie.
The Green campaigner reacted to the news of the assassination of the well-known author Salman Rushdie with the usual words for this: “I am deeply shocked by the brutal attack on the great man and author Salman Rushdie – hatred and violence must have no place in our free society. I wish him and his family much strength at this time.”
The reactions to Van der Bellen’s statement followed promptly on the social media platforms: Photos were immediately posted to the tweet of the Federal President, showing the Federal President in a friendly handshake with Iranian President Hassan Rohani at the Vienna Hofburg. Quote from Twitter specifically to Van der Bellen’s “deep consternation”: “This is what someone says who welcomed the president of the regime that imposed a death fatwa against Rushdie with a red carpet and military honours in Vienna.”
Many other social media users did not react quite as the marketing team of the election campaigning president would have wished. One user wrote: “Have we heard this about Austrian stabbing victims?” And one critic said: “You forgot to mention something: A bounty of more than three million dollars has been offered by Iran for whoever kills Rushdie. In the legal opinion issued by Khomeini, all those involved in the dissemination of the book were also threatened with death.”
For Alexander Van der Bellen, this is not the first problem in his starting election campaign: reportedly, his untruth about a “climate-friendly” train journey to Graz was exposed because it was revealed that his entire convoy of luxury official cars was driving the same route in parallel. Then the Green candidate also caused massive protests when, at the opening of the Salzburg Festival, he called all those Austrians “collaborators” of Putin who were critical of the EU sanctions. In the meantime, a new INSA poll shows that 52% of Austrians support an end to these EU measures against Russia because they massively harm Austria.
https://exxpress.at/nach-seiner-reaktion-auf-salman-rushdie-attentat-viel-kritik-an-van-der-bellen/