Michael Genner

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Michael Genner (2011)

Michael Genner (born October 27, 1948 in Vienna ) is an Austrian refugee advisor, chairman of Asylum in Not and author. In 2011 the Austrian League for Human Rights awarded him its annual human rights award .

Live and act

Michael Genner is the son of Laurenz Genner and the dentist Lily Genner, geb. Pollatschek (1908-1986). He graduated from the humanistic grammar school in Fichtnergasse in 1966 and then studied philosophy at the University of Vienna . In 1966 he joined the Association of Socialist Students of Austria (VSStÖ) and took an active part in its protest against the tuition fees at the time and for the opening up and democratization of universities. In April 1968 he showed solidarity with laid-off workers from the ELIN plant in Penzing and helped found the “Action Committee of Socialist Workers and Students”. After an attempt by Genner and around 1,000 other demonstrators to initiate discussions at the official May Day celebration of the SPÖ in Vienna in 1968, Genner resigned from the SPÖ and the VSStÖ.

Genner lived in one of the first communities in Vienna, the Theobaldgasse residential community. He and his roommates joined the KPÖ and were active there together as "Section 6", for example with an action against a sales fair for young people called "Twen Shop". Because of a leaflet for which he was responsible as a member of the board, he was arrested for six weeks on suspicion of being “incited to rebellion” (maximum sentence: 20 years in prison). Students demonstrated for his release and got parliamentarians like Christian Broda , Hertha Firnberg , Bruno Kreisky and Alfred Ströer to stand up for him. A jury acquitted him of the original charges in 1970, but sentenced him to one month's arrest for "incitement".

In order to be independent from the KPÖ, Genner's WG founded the group "Spartakus", of which he was a member of the board. They sat down for apprentices and antifascist a theme, occupied the Siemens pavilion at the Autumn Fair 1969 in protest against the partial privatization of nationalized industries and opened the campaign "Open the homes!" Against the states in the former boarding schools , which they called "youth camps" . Among other things, they occupied an empty tiger cage in the Schönbrunn Zoo . Genner negotiated contracts with parents to let young people live in activist apartments. However, some members of the Spartakus group were charged with kidnapping minors. Because of the trials and threats posed by right-wing opponents, Genner's group moved to Switzerland in 1972, where they founded the European cooperative Longo maï with members of the Swiss group Hydra . In 1973 they bought 300 hectares of land including three dilapidated farms in Provence with the money they had collected in Switzerland and founded the first “pioneer settlement”. In 1976 the lawsuit against Genner in Austria was overturned.

In 1977 Genner was expelled from Longo maï after internal conflicts. He returned to Vienna, worked for the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Human Rights and wrote his two books, My Father Laurenz Genner. A socialist in the village and a Spartacus. A counter-history of antiquity . In 1980 he returned to Longo maï, but finally broke with the group in 1986. In retrospect, he primarily criticized their leadership style as sect-like and authoritarian.

Genner has been involved in refugee work since 1989. From 1989 to 1991 he worked for the airport social service, which in 1991 received the Bruno Kreisky Prize for services to human rights together with the “Support Committee for Politically Persecuted Foreigners” (later renamed “Asyl in Need”) . In September 1990, when the Armed Forces took a position against illegal refugees during the border surveillance assistance operation at the Austro-Hungarian border, he was involved in the "Operation Grenzlos" and read a call to refuse to give orders to soldiers of the Armed Forces. Proceedings against Genner for inciting military offenses were discontinued in 1992.

From the airport social service he came to the Simmering social counseling center. In 1993 he started as a legal advisor for Asylum in Need . In 1994 he became managing director and since 2004 chairman of this organization. As such, he advocates legal and social advice and representation for asylum seekers, carries out public relations work, shows individual fates and criticizes politicians and authorities. In 2006 he protested against the tightening of aliens law and publicly called for refugees to be hidden from the threat of deportation. The public prosecutor's office declined to pursue a complaint against it. Together with SOS Mitmensch , he called on Interior Minister Liese Prokop, who was responsible for the tightening of the law, to resign.

Controversy

On January 1, 2007, Genner sent an obituary for the death of Liese Prokop to the media, which with the words “One less. What comes next? ”Began and culminated in the formulation“ The good news at the beginning of the year: Liese Prokop, Federal Minister for Torture and Deportation, is dead ”. Genner described Prokop as a "desk offender ..., completely numb, indifferent to the consequences of her laws and decrees, a compliant tool of a racially contaminated civil servants" and concluded with "No decent person weeps a tear after her". The obituary sparked outrage and death threats against Genner. He apologized to Prokop's relatives: They couldn't help the “deeply inhuman politics” of the deceased. At the same time, he demanded that the future Minister of the Interior should "apologize in the name of the republic to the victims of previous policies". The Vienna Regional Criminal Court sentenced Genner to a partial fine after a private lawsuit by Gunnar Prokop for defamation. Higher courts confirmed the verdict on the grounds that Genner's statements were primarily intended to defame the deceased Liese Prokop. The European Court of Human Rights rejected Genner's complaint against the restriction of his freedom of expression in this case on January 12, 2016.

In 2011, Genner campaigned against the extradition of the Chechen Ahmed Chatajew to his home country, even though he was suspected of supporting illegally armed groups. Chataev was later suspected of being the mastermind behind the terrorist attack in Istanbul on June 28, 2016 .

In 2013, Genner described “honest” smugglers in an article for “Asylum in Need” as “service providers” who performed a socially useful job. The Vienna Public Prosecutor's Office then investigated him for “approving an act threatened with punishment” ( Section 282 (2 ) StGB). Genner was supported by representatives of the media and politicians who founded humanitarian Fluchthilfe of smuggling demarcated. The public prosecutor's office had the proceedings stopped because Genner's testimony was covered by freedom of expression. Because of this case, the Austrian Ministry of Justice considered abolishing the criminal offense § 282, Paragraph 2.

Publications

  • My father Laurenz Genner. A socialist in the village , Vienna, 1979, Europa-Verlag. ISBN 978-3-203-50731-6
  • Spartacus. A counter-history of antiquity according to the legends of the gypsies , Munich 1979/80, Trikont , 2 volumes. ISBN 3-88167-053-X and ISBN 3-88167-060-2
  • Escape to Austria - Path into the Unknown , Vienna, Asylkoordination Österreich, 1995
  • Longo may . In: Bärbel Danneberg , Fritz Keller, Aly Machalicky (ed.): The 68er: A generation and its legacy . Döcker, Vienna 1998, ISBN 978-3-85115-253-1 .
  • Asylum procedure and police state . In: Nikolaus Dimmel, Josef Schmee (Hrsg.): The violence of the neoliberal state . facultas.wuv, Vienna 2008, ISBN 978-3-7089-0228-9 ( full text in the Google book search).
  • Torture victims in custody. Examples from practice . In: Herwig Schinnerl, Thomas Schmidinger (ed.): Escape from the war? Chechnya and Chechen people in Austria . Everyday life publishing house, Vienna 2009, ISBN 978-3-902282-20-0 .
  • Induction to insurrection - An attempt on resistance and anti-racism . Mandelbaum-Verlag, Vienna 2012, ISBN 978-3-85476-616-2 , p. 256 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Human Rights Prize 2011. (No longer available online.) Austrian League for Human Rights, archived from the original on April 30, 2016 ; accessed on April 30, 2016 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.liga.or.at
  2. ↑ Arbeiter-Zeitung , April 25, 1968: Thousands at ELIN protest
  3. ^ Democracy Center Vienna: 1968 in Austria
  4. ↑ Georg Friesenbichler: Our wild years: the seventies in Austria. Böhlau, Vienna 2008, ISBN 978-3-205-78151-6 , p. 73
  5. ^ Dieter Schrage : Communes and WG`s as countercultural models: WG in Theobaldgasse: Spartacus
  6. ↑ Michael Genner: We sixty-eight, part 3: SPARTAKUS home campaign
  7. ↑ Arbeiter-Zeitung, November 6, 1969: Twen-Shop: Beatings for protest
  8. ↑ Parlament.gv, minutes of December 3, 1969: Dr. Hertha Firnberg on the inquiry from Broda, Firnberg, Ströer and comrades regarding Genner's pre-trial detention (PDF); Protocol December 18, 1969: Dr. Hertha Firnberg on the Genner case (PDF p. 14751)
  9. ↑ Georg Friesenbichler: Our wild years: the seventies in Austria. Vienna 2008, p. 45
  10. ↑ Robert Foltin : And yet we move. Social movements in Austria. edition grundrisse, Vienna 2004, ISBN = 3-9501925-0-6, p. 74 ( online excerpt )
  11. ↑ a b Michael Genner: Longo may. In: The 68er: A generation and its legacy. Döcker, Vienna 1998, ISBN 978-3-85115-253-1
  12. ↑ Asyl in Not ( Memento of the original from June 7, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ; Bruno Kreisky Prize 1991 to the Support Committee for Politically Persecuted Foreigners , Bruno Kreisky Prize 1991 to the Schwechat Airport Social Service @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.wuk.at
  13. ↑ ORF, September 5, 1990: Armed Forces starts assistance ( Memento from February 9, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
  14. ↑ Juridikum 4/90: There is war before Parndorf (PDF p. 11; 7.7 MB)
  15. ^ Asylum in Not: Protest against the undermining of human rights and democracy
  16. ↑ Michael Genner (Asyl in Not): Indisputable
  17. ↑ Der Standard.at, September 26, 2006: Appeal against Aliens Act not punished
  18. ^ Asylum in need: NGOs demand: Prokop has to go
  19. ↑ Der Standard.at, January 11, 2007: Quoted: The Prokop obituary by Michael Genner
  20. ↑ Oe.24.at, January 8, 2007: “Asyl In Not” - Genner apologizes  ( page can no longer be accessed , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.oe24.at  
  21. ^ Die Presse, May 7, 2008: "Minister of Torture": verdict against Genner confirmed ; Die Presse, December 20, 2009: Prokop critic also flashed from the supreme court
  22. ↑ European Court of Human Rights, January 12, 2016: Case of Genner v. Austria - Judgment
  23. ^ Asyl in Not, July 7, 2011: Wiener Zeitung
  24. ↑ Ines Scholz (Wiener Zeitung, July 6, 2011): That would be his death sentence
  25. ^ Die Presse, July 1, 2016: The Chechen top ISIS soldier from Vienna
  26. ^ Die Presse, August 18, 2016: How Austria provided for a "top man" from IS
  27. ↑ Katharina Schmidt (Wienerzeitung, February 4, 2014): Posse about indictments against asylum worker Michael Genner
  28. ↑ Irene Brickner (Der Standard.at, March 2, 2014): Criminal law against "dissenters" is being reconsidered
personal data
SURNAME Genner, Michael
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian human rights activist and author, chairman of Asyl in Not
DATE OF BIRTH October 27, 1948
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna