The capital of Austria has been hit with a wave of shocking rape cases involving migrant men, but a conservative politician in Vienna now faces a Twitter suspension simply for criticizing the police response to the crisis,
A post by Dominik Nepp, the chairman of the Vienna branch of the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ), allegedly violated the rules on hate speech, according to Twitter. Nepp wrote in his post that there have been a number of attacks in Vienna involving “girls who were raped by asylum seekers.” He criticized the police, writing that they merely boasted “they had responded to a crime involving a drunk who had fallen asleep” by waking him up. Twitter slapped the post with a suspension and warned that “repeated violations will lead to a permanent suspension of the account.”
The conservative FPÖ party, which is currently tied as the most popular party in the country, is outraged by the temporary suspension, according to news outlet OE-24. FPÖ club chairman Maximilian Krauss says he is shocked by the ban, but according to him, it shows how important it is that Elon Musk reforms Twitter, as “censorship, banning and punishing opinions are the dangerous business of the left.”
Three rapes in less than a week
The Twitter suspension follows three rapes in less than a week in Vienna involving alleged foreign perpetrators. A 22-year-old woman was raped on Oct. 26 in the 10th district of Vienna while she was walking in Martin Luther King Park after midnight. The young woman told police a 30-year-old man with a dark, foreign complexion raped her, but police have been unable to find the assailant.
Police are unsure if the rape is connected to another rape on Oct. 24 in Liesing, where a man molested an 18-year-old on a bus. He then followed her, beat her, and raped in her in Fridtjof-Nansen-Park. The young girl said the man who raped her was 1.75 meters tall and a foreigner who did not speak proper German. The descriptions of the two perpetrators are similar, but it is unclear if the same rapist was involved, said a police spokesman when asked by Der Standard newspaper. Yet again, police have found no suspect.
On Oct. 22, there was a shocking case at Praterstern Square in the Leopoldstadt district, with police saying an 18-year-old was raped inside a public toilet by an unknown assailant. Two 12-year-olds from Syria stood guard outside the toilet while the sexual assault took place, and one of them stole the 18-year-old’s handbag and phone afterwards. Amazingly, following the rape and robbery, the 12-year-old Syrians complained to the police that they had been threatened with a knife by another 15-year-old Syrian who was later arrested as well. At the same time they were being questioned over their robbery report, the victim’s mother gave a separate police unit the location details of her daughter’s phone using the Find My Phone app. They tracked down the 12-year-olds who were already speaking with police and searched their pockets where they found the victim’s phone.
The Viennese opposition parties ÖVP and FPÖ pointed out that the three rapes in under a week point to the left-wing city government’s inability to protect citizens from sexual assault and crime.
Nepp also made a separate post on Facebook, which remains up, writing, “The series of rapes in Vienna is the result of the red-black welcome culture from 2015. (Vienna’s) Mayor Ludwig has also pampered criminal social migrants in Vienna with social funds by even having a minimum of 980 euros in social security paid out to those who are obliged to leave the country. The Ludwig-SPÖ has thus made Vienna an El Dorado for foreign murderers and rapists. The Viennese can thank their mayor for that.”
These rape attacks are due to a failed integration policy, and the city government has been sending the wrong signals to migrants for years, said ÖVP state party leader Karl Mahrer. However, Nepp, also criticized Chancellor Karl Nehammer and Interior Minister Gerhard Karner (both ÖVP), telling the press that they are just as responsible as Vienna’s Mayor Michael Ludwig (SPÖ).
Rosa Ecker, who is involved in women’s issues for FPÖ, also pointed to what she said is the failure of ÖVP’s security and women’s policy: “Rape is now the order of the day in Austria, and this year alone there have already been 28 murders of women… And what is Interior Minister Karner doing? He sets up tents to attract more illegal immigrants to our country.”
“We don’t need tents or more asylum homes so that even more people who are allegedly ‘seeking protection can be brought to our country. We finally need measures that protect girls and women in Austria and not more young men who molest, rob, and rape our girls and women. In Austria, such crimes must not be tolerated and become the norm.”
In fact, Vienna has been beset by rapes from migrants for years now, including three Afghans accused of gang raping and murdering 13-year-old Leonie in a park last year. The case shocked the nation at the time, and the trial is still ongoing.
In March of this year, a 27-year-old Afghan migrant was convicted of raping a 15-year-old girl, filming it, and then forcing her to watch the film after he was done. Other foreign nationals participated but received lighter sentences due to their age.
Nepp is also not the only conservative politician who has gotten into trouble for reporting on the troubling wave of sexual assaults and rapes committed by migrants, which are vastly disproportionate to their overall population in EU countries such as Sweden, Italy, France, and Germany. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s tweet was censored from the platform after she shared a video depicting a migrant man raping an Italian woman in broad daylight just shortly before last month’s election.