Austria

ZARA reported 16 physical assaults, including six causing serious injury and several carried out by groups. Victims were of Afghan, Algerian, Chechen, Egyptian, Nigerian, Serbian, Syrian, Tibetan and Turkish origin. ZARA also reported an incident in which an elderly man was seriously injured while attempting to stop an assault against a woman who was not being allowed into a metro lift, and a physical assault against a pregnant woman of Chechen origin who was with her children in a park.

ZARA reported a further two attacks carried out by groups against houses for asylum seekers, one of which involved physical assaults against three refugees and another in which fireworks were thrown at the windows of the house. ZARA also reported three incidents of threats, including one involving a knife, one incident in which the dog of a woman of Jordanian origin was repeatedly kicked and seriously injured, as well as 17 incidents of racist graffiti.

ZARA and the Documentation Centre for Muslims reported a physical assault against a Muslim woman, who required hospital treatment as a result of her injuries. The Documentation Centre for Muslims reported five physical assaults, including one carried out by a group that also caused serious injuries. All the victims were women wearing headscarves. The Centre reported a further two cases of graffiti on a mosque and two cases of the desecration of a place of worship, in which pigs’ entrails were left at the entrance of a mosque and at the site of a proposed mosque.

ZARA also reported an incident in which five pigs’ heads were placed on the construction site of an Islamic centre; a further three physical assaults, including one in which three women were slapped in the face on a tram and accused of being part of ISIS; and ten incidents of graffiti, including on an Islamic cultural centre.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and ZARA reported an attack carried out by a group against a Jewish football team in which victims were physically assaulted and injured. ZARA reported a further incident of a threat against a man, visibly identifiable as Jewish, on a bicycle, and 34 incidents of graffiti, including one on the wall of a Jewish cemetery and two on a Holocaust memorial site in Mauthausen.

The Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians reported an arson attack on a church, six incidents of damage to property and one incident of anti-Christian graffiti.