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In a country where the far right has been governing with the conservatives since December 2017, the search for animal welfare can make people fear the worst … The initiative of an Austrian elected to regulate ritual slaughter kosher and halal aroused the emotions of the Jewish and Muslim communities who see the effect of a campaign of the far right to stigmatize them.
While animal welfare issues are the responsibility of a counselor of the far-right party FPÖ, Gottfried Waldhäusl, representatives of the Jewish community were moved early this week to have received a letter from the region of Lower Austria, which extends all around Vienna and counts 1 , 6 million inhabitants.
The letter from the Regional Animal Protection Service, claiming to be based on the relevant Austrian legislation, explains that slaughterhouse customers will have to provide proof of religious affiliation and address.
There is "no question that the Viennese come to slaughter animals in Lower Austria," says Gottfried Waldhäusl, the Wiener Zeitung titled "Should we present his identity papers to buy kosher meat?
Impossible not to think of Nazism
But in this country, which was annexed eighty years ago by Nazi Germany, the leaders of the Jewish community feared the establishment of a " list of Jews entitled to buy kosher meat
This is reminiscent of the "darkest chapters in our history," said former Social Democratic Chancellor Christian Kern on Facebook. Officials of the conservative ÖVP party (that of the young Chancellor Sebastian Kurz), who runs the state of Lower Austria with the Social Democrats, have also badured that there was no question.
A simple "Administrative act"
However, Gottfried Waldhäusl reaffirmed his intentions in the Austrian press on Friday. In the daily Die Presse, he badures that "the law provides for a control of needs and religious affiliation" in the case of ritual slaughter.
In the daily newspaper Standard, he explains that "the need (of this type of meat halal or kosher, ed) must be justified and for that names must naturally be indicated ". It is a simple "administrative act," he adds, pointing out that the slaughter control approach was initiated by his predecessor on the left.
"Demonizing Minorities"
The Community Austrian Jewess (Israelitische Kultusgemeinde, IKG) felt that "animal welfare is a false pretense" and described the conditions as "hypocrites". "We demonize a practice to demonize minorities," IKG told AFP.
The Muslim community (Islamische Glaubensgemeinschaft in Österreich, IGGÖ) also found the project "unacceptable", ironically in a statement, "this ambiguous love of animals […] which stops when animal blood is used to profane synagogues or mosques and when we laugh at the social networks of Muslims or Jews who do not eat pork. "
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