Migrant Rape Epidemic Reaches Austria

Soren Kern writes in Gatestone:

• A 20-year-old asylum seeker from Iraq confessed to raping a 10-year-old boy at a public swimming pool in Vienna. The Iraqi said the rape was a “sexual emergency” resulting from “excess sexual energy.”

• Those who dare to link spiraling crime to Muslim mass migration are being silenced by the guardians of Austrian multiculturalism.

• According to data compiled by the Austrian Interior Ministry, nearly one out of three asylum seekers in Vienna was accused of committing crimes in 2015. North African gangs fighting for control over drug trafficking were responsible for roughly half of the 15,828 violent crimes — rapes, robberies, stabbings and assaults — reported in the city during 2015.

• Austria received 90,000 asylum requests in 2015, the second-highest number in the EU on a per capita basis, but this pales in comparison to what may lie ahead. Interior Minister Wolfgang Sobotka warned last month that up to one million migrants are poised to cross the Mediterranean from Libya to Europe.

The brutal gang rape of a woman by three Afghan asylum seekers in central Vienna on April 22 has shocked the Austrian public and drawn attention to a spike in migrant-related rapes, sexual assaults and other crimes across the country.

The migrant crime wave comes as the anti-immigrant Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) has surged in opinion polls. The party’s candidate, Norbert Hofer, won the first round of Austria’s presidential elections on April 24, and is on track to win the presidency in the second round, run-off election scheduled for May 22.

The three Afghans — two 16-year-olds and one 17-year-old — followed the woman, a 21-year-old exchange student, into a public restroom at the Praterstern train station, one of the main transportation hubs in Vienna. One of the migrants held the woman down while the other two took turns raping her.

A passerby called the police after she heard the woman screaming. By the time police arrived, the men had gone. The suspects, who were arrested as they were attempting to flee the station, do not speak German. Through an interpreter, the migrants told police they were drunk and do not remember carrying out the crime.

If convicted, they face a maximum sentence of seven-and-a-half years in prison. Due to the lenient nature of the Austrian judicial system, however, they may end up spending only two years behind bars, according to local observers.

It is also unlikely that the migrants will be deported: according to European law, sending them back to Afghanistan would be a violation of their human rights. Instead, observers say, the Afghans will qualify for Austrian social welfare benefits — €830 ($950) per month plus free healthcare — and probably for the rest of their lives become wards of Austrian state.

The assault in Praterstern is one of a growing number of migrant sex crimes in Austria (other migrant rapes and sexual assaults are included in the appendix below):

• A 20-year-old asylum seeker from Iraq confessed to raping a 10-year-old boy at a public swimming pool in Vienna. The Iraqi said the rape was a “sexual emergency” resulting from “excess sexual energy.” The man, who left his wife and child behind in Iraq, said he had been unable to control his libido because he had not had sexual relations since arriving in Austria in September.

• An 18-year-old asylum seeker from Afghanistan was sentenced to 20 months in prison for raping a 72-year-old woman in Traiskirchen. “First he beat the woman black and blue, then he raped her, and then he took her underwear as a trophy,” local police said. In addition to a lenient sentence, the man will be allowed to remain in Austria and, after he leaves prison, collect social welfare benefits.

• A 20-year-old asylum seeker from Afghanistan was arrested after he coerced 13-year-old girl from the town of Korneuburg repeatedly to have sex with him. The man, who was living in an asylum shelter in Hollabrunn, first established contact with the girl over the Internet. Each time they met in person, he verbally threatened her until she agreed to have sex. The man was arrested after the girl told her parents about the relationship, which had been going on for more than three months.

• Mobs of Arab migrants sexually assaulted dozens of women in Vienna, Salzburg and Innsbruck on New Year’s Eve. The sex attacks, known in Arabic as taharrush (“harassment”), were similar to those carried out that day by North African migrants in Cologne, Germany and other cities. Police initially denied that the attacks had taken place, but later admitted to lying, purportedly to protect the privacy of the victims.

Those who dare to link spiraling crime to Muslim mass migration are being silenced by the guardians of Austrian multiculturalism.

In April, for example, the Austrian Press Council (Presserat) — a group that enforces a politically correct “code of ethics” to ensure that Austrian media outlets toe the line of state-sanctioned multiculturalism — censured the left-leaning magazine, Falter, for “blanket discrimination” against Muslims.

The magazine’s editors — otherwise faithful proponents of European multiculturalism — appear to have had enough of migrants raping their way through Europe with virtual impunity. For the January-February 2016 edition, Falter’s cover featured a black and white drawing of five “light skinned” European women surrounded by large numbers of “dark skinned” Arab males. The image evoked images of the taharrush assaults in Cologne.

In a three-page “decision,” the Presserat ruled that the image violates the “code of ethics” because it amounts to “blanket slander and discrimination” against Arab men:

“The men are all portrayed with the same fierce-looking facial expression, dark hair and noticeably dark eyebrows. In this way — in the context of the attacks in Cologne — the artist is constructing a prototype of men from North Africa, i.e., the Arab world. The uniformity of the image suggests that, rather than portraying individuals, it depicts a homogenous group whose members all behave in the same way.

“Therefore, readers could be left with the impression that the sexual assaults in Cologne were not the acts of individual persons or person groups, but that such conduct is typical for men from North Africa, i.e., the Arab world. The image could leave the impression that all North Africa men who are here in Europe fail to conduct themselves correctly vis-à-vis women.”

The editors of Falter defended themselves against accusations of racism:

“The fact is that North Africans were overwhelmingly responsible for the assaults in Cologne. This is what took place and we should be allowed to represent it as such.”

Vienna is the epicenter of migrant crime in Austria. According to data compiled by the Austrian Interior Ministry, nearly one out of three asylum seekers in Vienna was accused of crimes in 2015. Of the nearly 21,000 officially approved asylum seekers in the capital, 6,503 were known to have committed crimes in 2015, a jump of nearly 50% over 2014. The data shows that 2,270 of the criminals were under the age of 20, a 72% jump over 2014. Seven were under age nine, while 31 were under age 13.

According to Vienna Police Chief Gerhard Pürstl, North African gangs fighting for control over drug trafficking were responsible for roughly half of the 15,828 violent crimes — rapes, robberies, stabbings and assaults — reported in the city during 2015.

The area around the Praterstern station, where the exchange student was raped, has become overrun by shiftless migrants from Afghanistan and North Africa who are selling drugs, fighting turf battles and assaulting female passersby. Police were dispatched to the area a total of 6,265 times in 2015, or an average of 17 times a day, according to local media. But local authorities appear unable or unwilling to restore order to the area….