The Gate to Hell

European Diary, 9.9.2020: Today completely without countenance and diplomacy. Naked and stunned. The Moria camp no longer exists. A major fire has destroyed the refugee camp on Lesbos, where thousands of people have been imprisoned for years as hostages of European politics. For several months 13,000 people have been living there in shelters that can accommodate only a fraction of them. Under inhuman conditions, hopelessly overcrowded, without sanitation, poorly kept alive by NGOs and the United Nations, which in return have to face insults from the criminals who rule us today. Austria pays something for the guarding of these people by the Greek police.

13.000 people, among them children, sick people, were kept there like cattle, as a deterrent against all those who possibly still believed in Europe’s “values” (be it moral, be it material).

For months NGOs have been warning that at some point Corona will break out in the camp. Largely isolated from the rest of the world, Moria was spared from Corona for a while. But a week ago there was the first serious case and numerous infections. Fear spread, of infections and even more so of the “quarantine”, because nobody is allowed to leave the camp anymore. Nevertheless, some managed to flee to the surrounding hills. The refugees are even more afraid of being shipped to newly planned, hermetic prison camps somewhere on Lesbos or Chios, and of losing the rest of their self-determination and dignity.

As a result, clashes broke out between different groups of refugees. At some point, the accumulated desperation of many months of hopelessness and torture turned into sheer panic.

The populists of Europe finally managed to explode the situation. The camp burned down. There are countless potential dangers in the shelters crammed with people. But there is talk of arson, and nobody would be surprised. If you have no other choice, the last resort is to set fire to the roof over your prison cell.

Austria’s Minister of the Interior uses the catastrophe for further agitation: “Migrants who are prepared to use violence have no right to asylum in Europe.” This makes one fear the worst. The cynicism of the last months and years is probably followed by even worse cynicism. This is the bare contempt for humanity. How can such a person still look at himself in the mirror in the morning? But perhaps the Nehammers and Kurz and how they are all called have taken down their mirrors in the meantime.

“Symbolic politics”

European Diary, 12.9.2020: The Austrian chancellor posts a video message. This has the undeniable advantage for him that he no longer has to put up with uncomfortable questions from rebellious journalists. Lying is even easier that way.
After all, more refugees cannot come here every year, he says. But in fact they have been getting fewer and fewer for years. In 2019 there were as few asylum applications as hardly ever since 2000.
Once again he reiterates his refusal to accept unaccompanied children or anyone else from the destroyed camp Moria. And in doing so he demonstrates a stubborn version of “morality”. “This inhuman system of 2015, I cannot reconcile with my conscience.” What “system” is he talking about? What conscience?
Instead, he says, “help is given on the spot, so that a decent supply is guaranteed.”
In the meantime, one had the opportunity to do this for years. And Austria has not lifted a finger. Because the conditions in Moria were supposed to serve as a deterrent, and therefore could not be inhumane enough. The demand for more humanitarian commitment on the part of Austria “on the ground” has so far interested Sebastian Kurz only in rhetoric, both as Foreign Minister and even more so as Federal Chancellor. Almost nothing has happened. Now he is calling for a “holistic approach”. What does he mean by this? He rejects “symbolic politics”, by which he obviously means the modest (shameful?) attempts by Germany, France and some other European states (including Switzerland) to free at least a few hundred children from the inferno on Lesbos.
This is the same man who looks dutifully serious at commemoration ceremonies for the victims of the Shoah when the Talmud is quoted: “Whoever saves a human life saves the whole world.”
I don’t know if that is really true either. But every child rescued from the chaos on Lesbos will at least feel that way.
Thousands of refugees are still camping out in the open. But even for Salzburg’s Governor Haslauer, the 13,000 refugees are just a collective arsonist and blackmailer who set fire to his house “so that (his) neighbor(s) will have to take him in”. And who therefore should not be helped.
This sick logic is currently widespread not only in Austria’s government, but above all in social networks. Does it still make sense to argue against it in any way? With such helpless sentences like:
Most of the people there didn’t set fire to anything at all, only a few of them did. And wasn’t it customary in Austria to rescue children from a house, even if one of the inhabitants of the house was perhaps an arsonist? But the people in Moria did not live in a “house” anyhow, but were locked into a camp against their will. And they were “kept” there under conditions that everyone knew would eventually lead to an explosion of despair. In the end, Corona came to the camp and the naked panic broke out.
How will people even talk to each other when such simple truths no longer matter? But that is exactly the point. There is no point in talking to each other here. That’s why there is a video message.

Alfred Otto Munk

On the day of the pseudo-democratic referendum on Austria’s “Anschluss” to the German Reich on April 10, 1938, Alfred Otto Munk (1925 – 2002) and his 23-year-old sister managed to escape near Lustenau to Switzerland. Their mother, Rega Brunner, daughter of Lucian Brunner, had organized a smuggler and forged papers and had the children picked up by car in Vienna. She herself had already fled Austria around the days of the “Anschluss” and was staying in Zurich. With two additional helpers, her children reached Swiss soil. The family left Zurich in October and immigrated to the USA where Alfred Otto Munk initially joined the US army. After war end, he studied at Stanford and worked for decades in American oil companies. Alfred Otto Munk’s letter about his escape from Austria was addressed to his father, Hans Munk, who—divorced from Rega Brunner since 1926—had already moved to the USA in 1937 and was residing in California. In his agitation, Alfred Otto Munk apparently forgot to mention that the day of his escape from Austria had also been his 13^th birthday.

Alfred Otto Munk, letter to his father, April 1938

“The promotion and protection of human rights is a priority for the European Union“

Installation Promotion and Protection of Human rights. Foto: Dietmar Walser

The European Human Rights Convention formulated in 1950 aims to safeguard the protection of individual human rights against state arbitrariness. The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg watches over its implementation. One of the pivotal figures in the establishment of the European Court of Human Rights was Hersch Zvi Lauterpacht (1897–1960) from Żółkiew in at the time Austro-Hungarian Galicia. After his studies in Vienna under Hans Kelsen, the expert in constitutional law, legal philosopher, and co-creator of the 1920 Constitution of Austria, Lauterpacht moved to London. Here he developed his concept of human rights. Possibly, its humanitarian character is linked to his personal experience: Lauterpacht had lost almost his entire family in the Shoah. He defined the “issue of human government” as securing the “natural and inalienable rights of man.” As adviser to the British prosecutors at the Nuremberg trials against the major criminals of war in1945-46, Lauterpacht developed the legal concept of “crimes against humanity” as elements of offense against international law. ^ Hersch Lauterpacht, Trinity College, Cambridge, UK, 1958, © The Lauterpacht Centre for International Law, Cambridge, UK < Tramway station “Droits de l’Homme” in front of the European Court of Human Rights, Strasbourg 2016 ©, Rainer Unkel/picturedesk.com > Greek police guarding the Turkish-Greek border, February 29, 2020, © Emrah Gurel/APA/picturedesk.com In 2012, the European Court of Human Rights decided in a landmark judgement that in case of expulsion/refoulement of refugees

“pursuant to Art.3 of the European Human Rights Convention, the repatriating state must prevent any ill-treatment in the country of destination
acquiescence to refoulement to the torturing country of origin violates against Art.3 of the European Human Rights Convention
collective expulsions also on the high seas and of boat people violate against Art.4 of the Fourth Protocol to the European Human Rights Convention
boat people can avail themselves of remedies against their refoulement pursuant to Art. 13 of the European Human Rights Convention.”

Implementation of the European Union’s commitment as formulated in the 2007 Treaty of Lisbon to accede to the Human Rights Convention has been blocked to this day—repeated avowals to do so notwithstanding. Could it be that then also an independent monitoring body would have to scrutinize the actions and credibility of the member states?

Europe’s Borders

Installation Europe’s Borders. Photo: Dietmar Walser

“We were able to travel without passport and permit, wherever we desired, nobody inspected our views, origins, race, and religion.” By the time Stefan Zweig completed his—albeit slightly idealized— Memories of a European in his Brazilian exile in 1941, he was faced with a radically altered reality in Europe. As early as in 1938, Switzerland had closed its borders to the rising numbers of Jewish refugees from Germany and refused them political asylum. In the period from 1938 until 1939, the St. Gallen police commander Paul Grüninger saved the lives of hundreds of Jewish refugees, also by forging the dates of border crossings. In early 1939, he was suspended from office and sentenced. Only in 1995, he was rehabilitated by Switzerland. While Grüninger is being honored as someone who came to the rescue of refugees, many helpers today are once again criminalized. One of the great achievements of the European Union was the Schengen Agreement of 1985, which enables the abolishment of border controls within the EU. In the meantime, also non-EU countries such as Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Iceland, and Norway participate in the Agreement. At the Austrian-Swiss border near Hohenems, the local border traffic in both directions has long since become part of everyday life. Some sectors such as agriculture, construction, or nursing are heavily reliant on “migrant workers” from Southeastern Europe. For them, special arrangements, independent of EU membership, have been put in place.

< Paul Grüninger-Bridge, as seen from Switzerland toward the Hohenems border crossing, 2020 © Dietmar Walser/Jewish Museum Hohenems

> Border fences between Hungary and Serbia, erected by Hungary in the summer of 2015 © Attila Kisbendedek/AFP

In 2009, on the occasion of the accession negotiations with the EU, the Republic of Serbia, too, was granted access to the control-free Schengen Area. This was to change in the wake of refugees moving in the direction of the EU. Numerous countries, among them also Austria and Germany, have reintroduced border checks. And since in the summer of 2015 about 160,000 refugees had reached Hungary, it erected a 300-km long and up to four-meter high barbed wire fence along its “external EU border.” In the meantime, the EU’s focus has shifted to the external border between Greece and Turkey. More than four million war refugees live in Turkey. In the framework of the EU-Turkey Agreement, the country has received financial support from the EU to stem the refugee flow toward the EU. Following the expiration of this agreement, Turkey brought refugees to the border in late February 2020 to put pressure on the EU. At that, Greece suspended, initially for one year, the right to asylum, which was openly in violation of the EU Human Rights Convention and the Geneva Refugee Convention. Then again, in the course of Corona, “migratory labor” in Europe is revealing its flaws: low pay, tough working conditions, and inhumane accommodations have unexpectedly been recognized as a problem for all of society.

„A Bird Comes A-flying“

Installation “A Bird Comes A-flying”. Photo: Dietmar Walser

A dense communications network transforms the world into a seemingly manageable space, delivers within minutes international news to our living rooms, and enables friends and family across continents to stay in contact. One of the pioneers of global communication was Paul Julius Reuter (1816–1899) who was born in Kassel as son of a rabbi and converted to Christianity in 1845. Early on, he recognized the significance of a rapid news transfer. He gained his first experience at the oldest European news agency, Agence Havas in Paris. In those years, the first telegraph lines were inaugurated, also between Paris and Berlin, though still with many gaps. Reuter seized the moment and invested in initially 45 and soon after in 200 carrier pigeons, hereby closing the missing links between Brussels and Aachen. In 1851, Reuter settled in London. He established a telegraph station in the stock exchange building from where he transmitted stock market news back and forth between Paris and London. Soon he was able to gain the trust of large media houses that tasked him with supplying them with important news from around the world. Reuter revolutionized international journalism by providing neutral and as far as possible objective news.

< Carrier pigeon, © Bettman, Getty Images > Pre-printed form of a free ticket for a brothel visit, © https://www.witzbold.org/bordell-gutschein.html The flipside of today’s global communications is the generation of fake news. Particularly via social media, bogus news is disseminated around the world in no time. Once online, it is almost impossible to revoke fake news brought into circulation. Meanwhile, serious journalism is in jeopardy also in several EU countries—due to the increasing enforced conformity of the press, but also the vilification and legal prosecution of journalists. In Austria, tabloid newspapers in particular receive funding from tax money, especially in the crisis year 2020. “Brothel vouchers” such as the one shown here have been in circulation since 1989. Originally conceived as a joke article for carnivals, versions of this voucher have swiftly spread around German-speaking Europe, nowadays mostly with the added remark “for refugees.” By publishing these “vouchers,” fake news about refugees is deliberately disseminated. Moreover, it is suggested that refugees are unable to control their sex drive and, therefore, receive vouchers for a free brothel visit from the government to prevent the rape of native girls.

Andrea Petö (Vienna) about closing the Central European University by the Orban governement: