Diplomatic Briefing
Your exclusive news aggregator handpicked daily!Archive for Austria
Newsline: Austrian foreign ministry forced to make cutbacks
People’s Party (ÖVP) Foreign Minister Michael Spindelegger has revealed details of his ministry’s savings measures. Spindelegger said the Austrian ministry for foreign and European affairs would cut costs by 13.4 million Euros as early as this year. Spindelegger explained that the lion’s share of savings should be achieved by making its administration more efficient. He denied that people working in the diplomatic service would lose their jobs. Spindelegger said his aim was to tighten Austrian embassies’ cooperation with other countries’ representations. Austria is already liaising with Germany in several countries outside Europe. The Austrian embassy in Bogota, Colombia, will close in a few months’ time before the alpine country’s consulates in Chicago, USA, and the Polish city of Krakow shut for good. Spindelegger said he planned to reorganise Austria’s representation in Italian capital Rome, New York City in the USA and Brussels, Belgium. The country is represented at several international institutions such as the United Nations (UN), the European Union (EU) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in these cities at the moment. It is operating embassies and consulates at the same time. Spindelegger promised to reduce diplomats’ travelling costs to meet the envisaged budget consolidation measures. Reports have it that the ministry considers cutting back donations to international charity and relief organisations as well.
http://austrianindependent.com/news/Politics/2012-03-06/10487/Foreign_ministry_forced_to_make_cutbacks
Newsline: Naked animal protestors near Chinese embassy in Vienna at minus 10 degrees
Animal activists from the Organisation Against Animal Factories in Vienna, Austria stripped naked as temperatures plummeted to less than minus 10C to protest against the Chinese using animal fur. The protesters undressed and laid naked in front of the Chinese embassy in the Metternichgasse in the Austrian capital. They hoped to make people aware of the fur imports from China through their chilly stunt.
http://austriantimes.at/news/General_News/2012-02-14/39483/Naked_animal_protestors_at_minus_10_degrees
Diplomatic history: How one Chinese diplomat saved thousands of Jews from the death camps
Eric Goldstaub curses, spits out a stream of naughty words and then abruptly apologizes for having uttered them. He can’t help himself, he says. It was a long time ago, a lifetime, but when he thinks back to the Vienna he once knew and all the doors that he knocked on — and all the doors that were shut in his face — his temper sparks. “I went to every goddamn consulate there ever was inVienna.Vienna, as the Austrian capital, had all the consulates,” the 89-year-old growls. “I wanted to get visas for my parents and for my relatives. I had 20 relatives. My family, we were 20. And I was going from one bloody consulate to the other.” He was a Viennese Jew, and this was his belovedViennain 1938, after the Austrians had welcomed Hitler and his Nazi thugs with straight-armed salutes and a campaign of Jewish persecution that would escalate into the Holocaust. His fruitless waltz around the city district housing international embassies ended when he visited the Chinese consulate and was met there by Dr. Feng Shan Ho, the Consul General. “It was a warm reception, and he said bring your passports tomorrow and we will give you all visas,” Mr. Goldstaub says. “I didn’t believe my eyes, my ears. It was like a miracle that he would say that and, sure enough, I went back the following day and brought all the family’s passports and he sent me away with visas for Shanghai, China. Much was lost in the Holocaust including, in large part, the story of a Chinese diplomat, an Oscar Schindler of theFar Eastwho, with a stroke of the pen rescued thousands of Jews from the death camps. The world in 1938 was a dangerous place, especially for Jews.Shanghai, an open port city without any diplomatic controls and with a Japanese occupying army watching over it, became a safe harbour for thousands fleeing the coming horrors inEurope. “People usually ask me two questions about my father,” says Manli Ho, the diplomat’s daughter, fromSan Francisco. “Why would some Chinese guy be saving Jews inViennawhen so many Europeans were turning their backs, and why didn’t he talk about it?” The answer, she believes, is that helping people was the most natural thing for her father to do. And since it was, he never spoke about it after the fact. Dr. Ho devoted one sentence of a 700-page Chinese language memoir he published in 1990 to the Viennese visa scheme. What he omitted is aHollywoodblockbuster that has never been made. For two years, he issued visas. Five hundred a month on average, despite being ordered to stop by his superiors and being evicted from the building housing his office by the Germans. Dr. Ho opened a new office, and paid for it out of his own pocket when his Chinese boss inBerlinshut off the money tap. He kept issuing visas until he was transferred out ofAustriain 1940. He died inCaliforniain 1997, having never met the people he helped save, beyond a fleeting, life-giving encounter inVienna. Mr. Goldstaub was among the lucky ones. The old man is turning 90 in a few weeks. “If I never knocked on that door inViennaI would have been in a concentration camp,” he says. “And I would have died, I am almost sure of that. Our whole family would have died. “We needed Feng Shan Ho. He saved us. It was a miracle.”
Newsline: Arrests in Vienna after Syrian Embassy break-in
After breaking into a Vienna building housing both the Syrian Embassy and Consulate eleven people have been arrested. A police spokeswoman has confirmed that in the early hours of Saturday morning “some people broke through the door into the embassy building”. Around 20 people were partaking in an anti-Syrian protest which eventually culminated in the break-in. No one has been reported as injured. Political protests of this scale are a rare occurrence in Vienna but the Austrian capital has, in the past few months, seen several smaller anti-Syrian demonstrations.
http://austriantimes.at/news/General_News/2011-10-10/36798/Arrests_after_Syrian_Embassy_break-in_
Newsline: Ex-Kazakh diplomat probed over killings
Austrian officials say a former top Kazakh diplomat is being investigated on suspicion of murder and kidnapping. A Kazakh court charged Rakhat Aliyev with murdering two bankers. The estranged former son-in-law of Kazakhstan’s president has sought political asylum inAustria. Austrian prosecutor Thomas Vecsey said Monday the current investigation is preliminary and that any trial would be held in Austria. In 2008, a Kazakh court convicted Aliyev of trying to overthrow his government and kidnapping the two bankers in 2007 during a commercial dispute. It sentenced him to 40 years in prison. He was dismissed as ambassador to Austria in 2007 after accusing Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev of totalitarianism.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2015575180_apeuaustriakazakhstanaliyev.html
Newsline: Austria moves its embassy from Tokyo to Osaka over nuclear concerns
Austria says it is moving its embassy from Tokyo to Osaka amid concerns that dangerous levels of radiation leaking from a crippled nuclear plant might reach the Japanese capital. The foreign ministry announced the move after Japan’s government said radiation had spread from the four stricken reactors of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant along Japan’s northeastern coast. Tokyo reported slightly elevated radiation levels Tuesday but officials said the increase was too small to threaten the 39 million people in and around the capital, about 170 miles (270 kilometres) away.
Newsline: Libyan Embassy in Austria condemns ‘excessive violence against peaceful demonstrators’
The Libyan Embassy in Austria is condemning the use of “excessive violence against peaceful demonstrators” and says it is representing the Libyan people. The embassy says in a statement Wednesday that it expresses its condolences to the families of victims. It also calls on the global community to live up to its obligation to protect civilians and take concrete measures to prevent further victims.
Newsline: Woman found dead in Vienna diplomat’s residence
A 30-year-old Philippine woman was found stabbed to death in the basement of the Vienna residence of Lebanon’s ambassador to Austria. The woman, a domestic worker in the residence, was found Tuesday morning by the residence’s cook. Investigators were searching the scene and interviewing witnesses. The ambassador, Ishaya El-Khoury, was abroad, the police said.
http://uk.mobile.reuters.com/mobile/m/FullArticle/eUK/CWORUK/nworldNews_uUKTRE5BS1H520091229
Book review: North Korean embassy in Vienna as European store cupboard
March 14, 2010 at 8:24 am · Filed under Austria, Commentaries, North Korea
Outside the presidential palace up to 3 million people were dying of starvation. Inside, dictators Kim Il-Sung and his son and heir Kim Jong-Il had their every desire met, no matter how obscene. Money was no object as they and their cronies lived a life of opulence while some countrymen resorted to cannibalism in a desperate effort merely to survive. Nobody was more grimly aware of the shocking difference in living standards than Kim Jong-Ryul. For he was the North Korean dictatorship’s personal shopper – whose job was to travel the globe and buy every luxury his country’s corrupt rulers demanded. Armed with shopping lists of anything from gold-plated guns to expensive cars, he easily found firms more than happy to break the international trade embargo on North Korea in return for a 30% fee. But the ex-colonel defected in disgust at the regime’s oppression of its people while living the high life. In doing so, he faked his death – knowing that if his defection was discovered his family and even his neighbours would face death. Now, aged 75, he has decided to come in from the cold for the first and last time and expose Kim Jong-Il’s tyranny in a remarkable book – In The Dictator’s Service – that lays bare the decadence and madness at the heart of the regime. He spent 20 years travelling on a diplomatic passport and a suitcase full of cash, using the code name Emil. The North Korean embassy in Vienna became his European store cupboard, to which he would return laden with spy technology, weapons and luxury goods. In the Austrian capital he could count on banking secrecy, easy trade rules and lax airport control. At the embassy, his shopping was repackaged and flown out with fake papers and the help of paid-off customs officers. He did deals with Swiss, German and French firms.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/celebs/news/2010/03/11/i-was-kim-jong-il-s-personal-shopper-115875-22101931/
Comments