Cardinal Christoph Schönborn and the Austrian bishops’ conference have sharply criticised the Austrian Interior Minister’s plans to introduce preventative detention for asylum seekers calling them an “attack on one of the oldest and most fundamental human rights”.
In a press conference on 26 February, Austrian Interior Minister Herbert Kickl, who is member of the right-wing Freedom Party (FPÖ), which, together with the centre-right People’s Party (ÖVP) forms the Austrian coalition government, outlined his plans to introduce preventative detention for refugees who might pose a danger to Austrian society.
“People are going to be put behind bars for something they might perhaps do one day – merely because someone thinks they are possibly capable of doing so”, the cardinal pointed out in his weekly column in the Vienna Free Paper 'Heute' of 1 March. The government was “of course only thinking of one particular group of people, namely asylum seekers, although Austrians, too, can be dangerous. Once we get used to people being imprisoned as a precautionary measure, where will that lead?”, the cardinal asked. “In dictatorships the world over people are often arrested out of sheer distrust. Tomorrow this could also happen to you or me. It simply must not be allowed to come to this”, the cardinal underlined.
The cardinal’s concern was shared by the Austrian bishops’ conference, the conference general secretary Peter Schipka said. He pointed out that locking people up for an indefinite period as a precaution without a judicial order “just because they were thought to be a general danger” was against the constitution and against human rights.
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