Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz condemned an anti-migrant poem published by a local branch of the far-right Freedom Party (FPOe), the junior party in his government coalition.
The poem was written by the FPOe deputy mayor of the town of Braunau in Upper Austria and used the image of foreign rats integrating with Austrian ones to illustrate the dangers of “mixing” cultures and languages.
“The choice of words is disgusting, shows contempt for human beings and is deeply racist,” said Kurz. “The Freedom Party in Upper Austria must distance themselves from this immediately and unequivocally and issue a clarification,” he went on.
Kurz leads the center-right People’s Party (OeVP), which has been in coalition with the FPOe since elections in late 2017 in which both parties ran on anti-immigration platforms.
With EU parliament elections next month fast approaching, Kurz has come under increasing pressure to condemn the actions of some FPOe members.
Last month the FPOe came under scrutiny for its ties to the nationalist Identitarian group, which received a donation from suspected New Zealand mosque attacker Brenton Tarrant.
After that episode Kurz demanded that the party break all ties with the Identitarians, saying he would “not tolerate any indecisiveness when it comes to dealing with this right-wing extremist movement.”
The leader of the opposition Social Democrats, Pamela Rendi-Wagner, said in a statement that the poem was “a reminder of a way of talking about certain groups which was widespread in Nazi propaganda.”
“The facts are clear. Where are the consequences, Mr Kurz?” she asked.
The FPOe deputy mayor who wrote the poem, Christian Schilcher, apologised in a statement for any offence caused.
He also told the regional Oberoesterreichische Nachrichten paper that the row was “much ado about nothing” ahead of the EU parliament elections.
