Vienna is grappling with a knife crime problem. In the wake of four stabbing attacks over the weekend in the Austrian capital, one of which took the life of an Iranian, FPÖ leader Dominik Nepp has called for a security summit.
On Sunday night, May 8th, in the fourth knife attack in just 48 hours, a 15-year old Syrian national—together with another unidentified assailant—stabbed a 19-year old man who was with his 20-year old girlfriend at the time.
As the couple walked to a bus stop, two young males came towards them, and seemed to follow them. Soon after, the pair started to whistle after the victim and his girlfriend.
When the man confronted them, they started to kick and hit him. Allegedly, the Syrian national then threatened to kill the victim, while brandishing a knife. The suspects fled when a bus pulled up.
It was only after the victim and his girlfriend got on the bus that they noticed a puncture wound in the young man’s back. Emergency services were promptly called and soon arrived on the scene and took him to the hospital where he is now recovering.
Police meanwhile conducted a search for the two suspects, but could only find and arrest the 15-year-old Syrian, who was still in possession of the knife. A manhunt for the second suspect is ongoing.
On Monday, Exxpress reported, Viennese FPÖ leader and City Councilor Dominik Nepp remarked that “Vienna’s cycle of violence is apparently spinning faster and faster.”
“It is high time that ÖVP (Austrian People’s Party) Minister of the Interior [Gerhard] Karner acts and provides more police presence in Vienna,” Nepp added, while reserving much sharper criticism for SPÖ Mayor Michael Ludwig:
Through the undifferentiated welcome policy of the Viennese SPÖ, which Ludwig practices ad infinitum, the door has been opened for the influx of illegal and foreign criminals. Instead of finally ending the incentive policy in Vienna and putting pressure on the federal government to immediately deport these criminals, Ludwig is thinking about softening the citizenship application process. This unacceptable immigration policy is to blame for the fact that the Viennese can no longer walk the streets without fear.
Nepp’s outrage was joined by that of FPÖ security spokesman Hannes Amesbauer, who noted that the “unbelievable wave of violence” in the capital was “clearly a product of illegal mass immigration,” and that “a paradigm shift in asylum and migration policy” was needed.
These are not isolated cases, Amesbauer stressed, as he called for ÖVP Minister of the Interior Gerhard Karner to answer a parliamentary question about the extent of violent attacks committed by migrants. “What is reported to the public is but the tip of the iceberg, and it is alarming!” he warned.
Armed with countless media reports on acts of violence and knife attacks, the security spokesman has formulated 32 specific questions for the Minister of the Interior, according to the FPÖ press release.
Addressing his fellow politicians, Amesbauer concluded that, in that capacity, they were all “responsible for the security of the domestic population” and not for “playing welfare office to the world!”
