Susanne Winter

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Susanne Winter (born July 23, 1957 in Graz ) is an Austrian politician and former member of the National Council . Until her expulsion in November 2015, she was a member of the Freedom Party of Austria .

Professional background

Susanne Winter graduated from the Business School in Graz in May 1976 . From 1976 to 1979 she studied medicine in Graz and from 1980 until her graduation (Dr. iur.) 1985 law at the Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz . From 1986 to 1987 she was legal advisor of the Mayr-Melnhof Karton AG and Intervention Unit of the 1987-1988 Economic worked Styria. Then came two years of parental leave . She has been working in her husband's dental practice since 1990, where she is responsible for the management and organization of the practice.

Political career

Susanne Winter joined the FPÖ in 1997 and was chairwoman of the party in the Graz district of Straßgang the following year .

Between 1998 and 2001 she worked in Straßgang as deputy district chairwoman, in 2007 she was elected city party chairwoman of the FPÖ Graz and top candidate for the Graz municipal council election in 2008 , in which the FPÖ, which in 2003 fell from 26.78 percent of the vote to 7.98 percent , aimed to gain votes and join the city government. Ultimately, her party received 3.11 percentage points more votes and was 11.09 percent.

In March 2008, Susanne Winter became a city councilor in Graz. On June 20, Winter resigned as Graz FPÖ club chairwoman, but kept the city council seat.

From October 28, 2008 to November 2, 2015, Susanne Winter was a member of the FPÖ Member of the National Council. After her exclusion from the FPÖ, she has since exercised her mandate as a non-party .

In June 2009, Winter withdrew from the Graz city government. You waived another candidacy.

As a member of the National Council, she was the FPÖ's environmental spokesperson in 2015. In this function, she described climate change as "building of lies" and "ideological pseudoscience ". For this she was nominated by the GWUP for the negative award " The Golden Board " 2015.

In October 2015, Winter was criticized after she posted an anti-Semitic post on her Facebook page , according to which the " Zionist money Jews" were to blame for the refugee crisis, with the words "nice that you take the words out of my mouth ;-)" praised. Because of this comment, she was expelled from the FPÖ on November 2, 2015 .

In 2016, Winter became a member of the right-wing European party Alliance for Peace and Freedom , which includes the National Democratic Party of Germany and the Greek Golden Dawn .

In March 2016, Susanne Winter spoke at a demonstration by the right-wing extremist People's Party and announced that she would not go to the polls, as this only supported “the system”. In an interview on the subject of the upcoming runoff election on December 4, 2016 for the office of Austrian Federal President, she said that she “should actually vote for Van der Bellen”. She also praised Federal Chancellor Christian Kern (SPÖ) and described him as a “sustainable politician”.

Controversial statements

The focus of the winter election campaign for the 2008 municipal council elections in Graz were openly polarizing attacks against beggars and migrants as well as discrimination against Islam. To mobilize its supporters, the Graz FPÖ had invited to a lecture and discussion event in the run-up to the election campaign, at which, in addition to Winter and the FPÖ member of the European Parliament Andreas Mölzer , Filip Dewinter (group leader of the Vlaams Belang ) and Markus Beisicht ( pro Cologne ) participated. The topic of the meeting in the House of Academic Singers Gothia was The “right” way for Europe's cities .

The Human Rights Advisory Council of the City of Graz, set up for the first time on the occasion of this election, clearly condemned the FPÖ's election campaign: " Islamophobia and xenophobia (" MultiKultiWahn ") were central elements of the FPÖ's election campaign."

Winter caused a political scandal - and the associated initial media attention due to racist statements - with an interview for the weekly newspaper Falter in November 2007. She had countered a black interlocutor that he had been thrown out of a pub because "something was in his genes", which means that he "automatically has too little self-confidence and too much sovereignty towards the other skin color". When asked not to call black people “negroes” because this was discriminatory and offensive, Winter replied that this was his personal feeling and that she “did not want to submit to political correctness ”.

In the same interview, Winter was asked about her contributions to the magazine Phönix , a newspaper by Walter Ochensberger, who was convicted of Holocaust denial under the Prohibition Act . There she had published, among other things, an article on the thorn finger spider entitled Dangerous Immigrants , which was illustrated with a picture of praying Muslims. When asked whether it was not necessary to keep your distance from someone convicted under the Prohibition Act, she replied: "My view of history is a private matter."

Winters utterances on Islam

Winter aroused national and Europe-wide reactions with her speech at the FPÖ New Year's meeting on January 13, 2008 in Unterpremstätten .

“In the last few years a real Muslim immigration tsunami has broken through the mo .. over Graz. Mosques are being built everywhere against the will of the population. We, dear friends, as the FPÖ, are the only ones in Austria who want to stop this increasing Islamization. And I am of the opinion that Islam should be thrown back where it came from, namely on the other side of the Mediterranean. (Applause) But personally, I ask myself: Is everything that is called a religion these days really a religion? Let's just look at the Prophet Mohammed: He is more likely to be called a general. 66 wars, 27 of which he led himself. He wrote the Koran in the context of epileptic fits . And - something that particularly outrages me as a woman, and which I keep pointing out and saying: As a 50-year-old, he married a six-year-old girl . In the current system, this Mohammed is a child molester . (Applause)"

She then told the Austrian daily newspaper that there was “widespread child abuse by Islamic men”.

In a school in Graz, Winter is said to have said: "We should set up an animal brothel in the city park so that the Muslim men can go there and don't abuse the girls in the city park." In court on January 22, 2009, Susanne Winter justified herself by saying that only to have defended her son Michael Winter, who originally made this statement in the magazine Tangente des Ring Freiheitlicher Jugend . You yourself have distanced yourself from it in terms of content. Michael Winter has already been convicted of the recommendation in a broadcast to the mayor of Graz, Siegfried Nagl , "to let a flock of sheep graze in the city park as an immediate measure against Muslim-Turkish rape".

Reactions

While FPÖ federal party leader Heinz-Christian Strache defended the Graz top candidate of his party (“as a mother only exaggerated formulations”), representatives of the SPÖ , ÖVP and Greens condemned Federal President Heinz Fischer (“absolutely unacceptable statements against Islam [ ...], which I firmly condemn [...] That was not the voice of Austria, that was a voice from which we distance ourselves ") and the then Federal Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer (" It is not allowed in Austria that Peace, freedom and tolerance are trampled 'with feet or with beer mugs'. ”) Winter's statements are sharp.

Representatives of Austrian churches and religious communities also rejected Winter's polemics, such as the Graz episcopal vicar Heinrich Schnuderl : “The abnormalities [...] lack any respect for members of another religious community. They are an expression of a religious intolerance based on a purely populist calculation. ”According to an OGM survey, 69 percent of Austrians also considered Winter's statements to be an inadmissible provocation, while 18 percent saw them as a permissible criticism.

On January 15, 2008, a video threatening Susanne Winter created by several Muslim men was discovered on the Internet and removed by the operator YouTube . Several editorial offices of the Austrian media received e-mails calling for the killing of Winters, the sender was given as the Global Islamic Media Front (GIMF). Susanne Winter then received personal protection from the Austrian police's Cobra commando , which was lifted at the end of March 2008.

Winter's approach to artificially exaggerating or dramatizing conflicts has meanwhile become proverbial among political opponents. Werner Kogler of the Austrian Greens describes the online game mosque baba , in which minarets have to be "shot down" and which ends with the words that Styria is "full of minarets and mosques", as the "Susanne Winter Method".

Prosecution

On January 14th, 2008, the Graz public prosecutor's office started preliminary inquiries according to § 283 StGB ( incitement ) against Winter. The Viennese Evangelical Lutheran diocese also filed a complaint against Winter for incitement to hatred. The Islamic Religious Community in Austria brought on 15 January a criminal complaint by § 188 of the Criminal Code (vilification and ridicule of religious teachings) against winter and the FPÖ.

Since the investigated offenses are threatened with a prison sentence of up to two years and thus with the loss of eligibility , according to the statute of the city of Graz, Susanne Winter was not allowed to exercise a municipal council mandate or the office of city councilor during the investigation. After an amendment to the statutes by the Styrian state parliament in March 2008, Winter was able to take up office.

On April 2, 2008, the Graz Public Prosecutor's Office filed a criminal complaint with the Regional Court for Criminal Matters in Graz, “being charged with the offense of incitement to hatred, the offense of degrading religious teachings”. Winter's lawyer applied to move the trial to Vienna, but the Supreme Court refused. After Winter was sent to the National Council by the FPÖ, the Graz public prosecutor made a request on November 7th “for consent to the official prosecution of the members of the National Council Dr. Susanne Winter on suspicion of criminal acts according to § 283 Abs. 2 as well as § 188 StGB ", which was assigned to the immunity committee on November 11th. On November 25, 2008, the request was granted to the Immunity Committee. Winter thereupon welcomed the step of the National Council, because “only by referring to an independent court a clarification can be achieved in your matter. After all, their cause is clearly based on a political hunt by confused, self-appointed sentiment guards ”. In addition, Winter stressed “again her innocence. It cannot be that in a democracy someone ends up before the criminal judge on the basis of the expressed opinion ”.

Court hearing

The trial took place on January 22nd, 2009 at the Graz Regional Criminal Court . Winter's lawyer built the defense primarily with reference to "freedom of expression". Winter herself tried to put her statements into perspective, for example that she only meant “radical Muslims” with her “Mediterranean” statement, with the “child molester” statement she wanted to point out grievances in society and stand up against forced marriages with children without offending Muslims , and that epilepsy is an often cited "saint's disease" that she "did not want to evaluate negatively at all". The judge only responded to the latter with the incredulous counter-question whether she really wanted to persuade him that she meant that as "admiration". In the other statements of the speech, the relativizations and assurances expressed by Winter in court that he did not want to offend anyone are incomprehensible.

In his plea at the beginning of the trial, the public prosecutor said that “a general preventive line should be drawn with this judgment”, since the following election campaign in Vienna will ultimately be about what is allowed and what is not. With regard to freedom of expression, he stated that there are “barriers inherent in fundamental rights”, “namely where I excessively exercise a fundamental right in order to curtail that of another”.

The trial ended in a conviction to a fine of 24,000 euros and a conditional imprisonment of three months for incitement to hatred and degradation of religious teachings.

Winter considered the judgment “incomprehensible” and called her statements “my truth, and it was spoken with God's help”.

The first instance conviction was followed by calls for resignation from the SPÖ and the Greens. FPÖ politicians attacked the judiciary. Criminal law experts described the judgment as “correct” and “groundbreaking”.

On June 17, 2009, the Graz Higher Regional Court dropped two of the criminal facts in the appeal judgment, but rated the remaining two as "bad enough" to confirm the extent of the sentence.

Winter announced that he would appeal against the judgment to the ECJ .

Awards

Negative price:

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ City administration Graz: Results of the municipal council election 2003 ( Memento of the original from January 23, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) 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.graz.at
  2. ↑ Telepolis : FPÖ have brought little anti-Islamic slogans , January 21, 2008
  3. ↑ orf.at Styria: Winter resigns as Graz FPÖ club chairwoman. Accessed November 11, 2008 .
  4. ^ DerStandard.at: Susanne Winter leaves city government , June 10, 2009
  5. ↑ The Standard July 9, 2015
  6. ^ Blog post by GWUP
  7. ↑ MP Winter has to leave the FPÖ, but wants to keep the mandate , Der Standard , November 2, 2015; accessed November 18, 2015.
  8. ^ FPÖ: Susanne Winter has to leave the party , DiePresse.com , November 2nd; accessed November 18, 2015.
  9. ↑ No more money for extreme right-wing parties. In: kurier.at. April 1, 2017. Retrieved December 29, 2017 .
  10. ↑ Winter MPs on right-wing extremist demonstration. In: derStandard.at. March 5, 2016, accessed December 6, 2017 .
  11. ↑ a b Susanne Winter "would have to choose Van der Bellen". In: DiePresse.com. November 18, 2016, accessed January 15, 2018 .
  12. ^ Posters for the Graz municipal council election 2008
  13. ↑ Der Standard: Protests and rioting during FPÖ discussion , 23 November 2007 ( print version , last accessed 19 February 2009)
  14. ↑ Human Rights Advisory Council of the City of Graz: Election campaign observation of the Graz municipal council elections in 2008 ( Memento of the original from February 8, 2015 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. , P. 2f of the pdf document, summary of the documentation from February 14, 2008; The press : Graz: fratricidal war on the right with tight slogans , January 10, 2008; Web links accessed February 19, 2009 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.wahlkampfbarometer-graz.at
  15. ^ Styria ORF : Susanne Winter. Racist scandal , November 21, 2007
  16. ↑ Falter: "Poison in me". African genes, animal brothels and poison spiders. What the FPÖ top candidate Susanne Winter dreams of , No. 47, November 21, 2007; see also: Ulla Schmied, Christa Zöchling, 'Stramme Burschen, Alte Herren'. Profile online, July 26, 2008 (accessed January 24, 2009)
  17. ↑ Falter: "Poison in me". African genes, animal brothels and poison spiders. What the FPÖ top candidate Susanne Winter dreams of ( Memento of the original from January 18, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) 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. , No. 47, Nov. 21, 2007; The standard: Grazer Gene , January 10, 2008 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.falter.at
  18. ↑ Der Standard: International press reviews: "FPÖ politician insults Mohammed" , January 15, 2008, updated January 23, 2008, last accessed November 3, 2015.
  19. ↑ n-tv : “Immigration Tsunami” - Strong criticism of the FPÖ , January 15, 2008
  20. ↑ Austria: Public prosecutor investigates FPÖ-Winter  ( page no longer available , 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. , January 13, 2008, no longer accessible on December 7, 2008.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.xn--sterreich-z7a.at  
  21. ↑ Transcript of Winter's speech. ORF report from January 16, 2008
  22. ↑ OTS of the Austria Press Agency : FPÖ New Years Meeting - Winter: "Child abuse by Islamic men widespread" , January 13, 2008
  23. ↑ Die Presse: Winter is also accused of “animal brothel” sentence. November 19, 2008
  24. ^ ORF Styria: Susanne Winter convicted of hate speech , from January 22, 2009
  25. ↑ a b c Colette M. Schmidt: Judgment that 'draws general preventive line.' Der Standard , January 23, 2009, p. 7
  26. ↑ BP Fischer: New Year's Address to the Diplomatic Corps, January 15, 2008 ( Memento of the original from June 15, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been 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.hofburg.at
  27. ↑ a b Österreichischer Rundfunk: Slap in the face for winter in front of diplomats ( memento of the original from January 19, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) 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. , January 15, 2008 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / orf.at
  28. ^ SPÖ press service: Gusenbauer (2): "Nobody has the right to offend members of a religious community" APA-OTS (original text service) (accessed on January 23, 2009)
  29. ↑ Die Presse: Reactions: “Not the Voice of Austria” , January 15, 2008
  30. ↑ http://www.google.de/#hl=de&sclient=psy-ab&q=muslime- bitten-tod-fuer-susanne-winter%2F&oq=muslime- bitten-tod-fuer-susanne-winter%2F&gs_l= hp. 3 ... 16586.16586.2.16770.1.1.0.0.0.0.96.96.1.1.0 ... 0.0 ... 1c.61pxte048Rw & pbx = 1 & bav = on.2, or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf. & Fp = c9218a36b4eaf051 & biw = 1030 & bih = 635
  31. ^ Die Presse: Personal protection for winter canceled , January 16, 2008
  32. ^ ORF: Personal protection for winter canceled , March 29, 2008
  33. ↑ Birgit Riegler in Der Standard online: Game "Moschee Baba": FPÖ advertising lets muezzins shoot down from August 31, 2010
  34. ^ Die Presse: Public prosecutor investigates FPÖ candidate Winter , January 14, 2008
  35. ↑ Der Standard: Evangelical Church files criminal complaint against Winter , January 15, 2008
  36. ↑ Der Standard: Islamic Faith Community Indicates Winter and FPÖ , January 15, 2008
  37. ↑ Statute of the City of Graz, Section 20, Paragraph 4c ( Memento of the original dated February 12, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) 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.ris2.bka.gv.at
  38. ^ ORF Styria: A city councilor without a job
  39. ↑ Österreichischer Rundfunk: Amendment to the statutes: Winter may be a city councilor , March 11, 2008
  40. ^ ORF Styria: Susanne Winter is charged
  41. ^ ORF Styria: Trial against Susanne Winter in Graz
  42. ↑ Parliament: Request from the Graz Public Prosecutor's Office (21 St 8 / 08t) for approval of the prosecution of the members of the National Council Dr. Susanne Winter on suspicion of criminal acts according to § 283 Paragraph 2 and § 188 StGB
  43. ↑ ORF Steiermark: Winter: lifting of immunity applied for
  44. ↑ OTS: Winter welcomes extradition - given the opportunity for clarification , November 25, 2008
  45. ↑ Der Standard : Winter Condemned , January 22, 2009
  46. ↑ Winter condemned: "Must be allowed to insult religion" , Die Presse, 23 January 2009
  47. ^ SPÖ and the Greens demand the resignation of Susanne Winter , Die Presse, January 23, 2009
  48. ↑ http://www.salzburg.com/nwas/index.php?article=DText/$96xy0bkzu_x7d$qjw*u$am&img=&text=&mode=§ion=newsletter&channel=nachrichten&sort=#
  49. ^ A b Judgment against Susanne Winter confirmed on ORF -Steiermark from June 17, 2009, accessed on June 18, 2009
  50. ^ Salzburger Nachrichten: 'Black Globe Award' to FPÖ environmental spokeswoman Susanne Winter , September 1st, 2015
personal data
SURNAME Winter, Susanne
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian politician (FPÖ), member of the National Council
DATE OF BIRTH July 23, 1957
PLACE OF BIRTH Graz