[ad_1]
“Mr. Chancellor, I hate to interrupt you, but that is not true.”
With this simple phrase, ORF Deputy Editor-in-Chief Armin Wolf condemned Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz for a false statement in a live interview, and is now celebrated online for his parade.
Kurz had come to the »ZiB 2« interview to defend the new and strict travel regulations in Austria that should apply during Christmas and New Year’s Eve. Moderator Wolf also showed him his statement that people from the Western Balkans in particular had brought the corona virus to Austria.
Migrants as scapegoats
The politician ÖVP presented the new measures to combat the corona virus at a press conference on Wednesday. In addition to the extensive closures, there is a ten-day quarantine obligation for all people entering from Corona’s risk areas. Kurz said in support of the reasons, “for returning travelers, and especially for people who have spent the summer in their home countries,” “the infections returned to the country.” In particular, he singled out those returning from the Western Balkans as responsible.
Soon after, numerous Austrian media accused of stigmatizing migrants as scapegoats for the crown crisis. Moderator Armin Wolf also addressed the allegation in the ORF interview. Many people of migrant origin found the statement at the press conference “really outrageous,” Wolf zu Kurz said. 70 percent of the infections occurred in Austria, the moderator said.
The chancellor tried to dissuade him, saying that he had not even asked the question of nationality. But the moderator interrupted the chancellor. When Kurz asked to be able to continue speaking, Wolf just replied, “Please no, because what he’s saying is wrong.” Kurz was explicitly referring to migrants, adds the moderator, and quotes verbatim passages from the press conference.
After all, Kurz has to be small. “That’s right,” says the chancellor. It meant that a third of the infections in the summer were due to people returning from a trip, and most of them were in the Balkans.
A strict lockdown has been in place in Austria since mid-November, and the number of new infections has dropped significantly since then. However, the downward trend is less strong than expected. On Wednesday, there were 3,972 new infections in one day. In relation to the number of inhabitants, this value is several times higher than in Germany.
Therefore, the government relies on a consistent border regime so that returnees or tourists do not bring the virus into the country, Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz said of the new measures. Therefore, the quarantine obligation should apply to travelers who come from risk areas with more than 100 new infections per 100,000 inhabitants in the last 14 days. This applies in practice to all neighboring countries and especially to the Western Balkans, he said.
