Austria far-right leader ramps up anti-immigration rhetoric
Vice-chancellor condemns ‘creeping Islamisation’ as EU elections approach
Zurich — The head of Austrian junior coalition partner and far-right Freedom party pledged on Sunday to fight “creeping Islamisation”, doubling down on his anti-immigration stance ahead of European elections on May 23. Heinz-Christian Strache, who serves as Austria’s vice-chancellor, insisted he would not stop referring to immigration as “population displacement”, a term used by far-right groups in Austria that want to reverse the inflow of newcomers into the country. Most polls in Austria show the Freedom party in third place, with its senior coalition partner, the Conservative Austrian People's Party, in first and the opposition Social Democrats in second place. “There is a creeping Islamisation, a population change, or a population displacement,” Strache told Austrian newspaper OE.24. Critics counter this view with government data on immigration, which shows that in 2018 roughly 16% of Austria’s population has foreign citizenship, up from 10% a decade earlier. Austria’s public b...
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