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09. 02. 12. - 19:00

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09. 02. 12. - 19:00

Pühringer rejects U-turn on rightist ball

Young Social Democrats (SPÖ) have appealed to Upper Austrian Governor Josef Pühringer not to attend the Burschenbundball in Linz this Saturday.

The pressure on the head of the Upper Austrian branch of the conservative People’s Party (ÖVP) increased following controversies regarding last month’s Viennese Corporations Ball. The event is widely considered as a get-together of Europe’s right-wing extremists. Anti-fascism campaigners claim that many guests of the ball deny the Holocaust.

The Vienna Corporations Ball is co-organised by a member of the Freedom Party (FPÖ). The right-wing faction’s boss, Heinz-Christian Strache, caused a heated discussion by claiming that what occurred ahead of the event bore resemblance to the Reichskristallnacht. Shops and synagogues across Germany and Austria were destroyed and set on fire on the Night of Broken Glass of 9 November 1938.

Strache stressed a few days after the ball that he had made the remark under the impression of crying women who were physically and verbally attacked by protesters outside Vienna’s Hofburg Palace. The SPÖ branded Strache’s approach to historical fact as "absurd" while the ÖVP urged him to "apologise, at least".

Now left-wingers appeal on Pühringer not to attend this weekend’s Burschenbundball. Representatives of the SPÖ’s youth and student groups in Upper Austria said yesterday (Weds) Pühringer would legitimate right-wing extremism by showing up at the bash of student fraternities with far-right background.

Dozens of people joined a demonstration in the centre of Linz, the provincial capital of Upper Austria, yesterday. Hundreds are expected to take to the streets against the Burschenbundball on Saturday. Pühringer argued that the governor’s visit of the ball had a long tradition. He said this was the reason why he decided not to cancel his attendance. The ÖVP Upper Austria leader promised to stay away from the ball in the future if he noticed any kind of right-wing tendencies at this year’s edition.

Meanwhile, Franz Vranitzky said he felt "confirmed" in his long-lasting anti-FPÖ policy by the most recent statements of Strache and Franz Obermayr, a member of the FPÖ’s delegation in the European Parliament (EP) in Strasbourg, France. Obermayr said that there had been a "pogrom atmosphere" outside Hofburg Palace on the night of the Vienna Corporations Ball. Viennese police said five guests of the event and three officers were injured in altercations with activists.

Vranitzky, who stepped down after 11 years as Austrian chancellor in 1997, told Die Presse last week that Obermayr’s statement was "proof of a lack of historical knowledge – or historical impertinence." Vranitzky kept ruling out a cooperation of his party with the FPÖ when Jörg Haider, who died in 2008, became chairman in 1986.

Hundreds of people from all over the continent attended a peaceful demonstration against xenophobia and fascism in Vienna on the night the ball took place before violent activists gained the upper hand of the scenery. Newspapers reported that hundreds of left-wing campaigners, most of them German, came to the Austrian capital to protest against ball guests' attendance of the event.

Austrian Times

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