Indicator history

Public servants have been reported as being perpetrators of racist violence on many occasions. However, as there are no official statistics concerning the ethnic origin of the people filing complaints about the police and of a specific record of the complaints made about racist behaviour, it is not possible to accurately gauge the extent of this problem (see ECRI Report on Austria 2010, p. 39).

Several NGOs repeatedly recorded racist incidents and ill-treatment by civil servants.The anti-racism-NGO ZARA annually publishes a report on racist incidents in Austria including racist and xenophobic misbehaviour and attacks by the policy and by other state officials and civil servants. Also the Amnesty International Report on Institutional Racism in Austria elaborates on institutionalized forms of racism within the police in particular and the judicial system in general and refers to the fact that "racially motivated misconduct" is not only an issue of individual misbehaviour but is also reflected in structural shortcomings (Amnesty International 2009, p. 53).

Sources: http://hudoc.ecri.coe.int/XMLEcri/ENGLISH/Cycle_04/04_CbC_eng/AUT-CbC-IV-2010-002-ENG.pdf; http://www.zara.or.at/index.php/beratung/rassismus-report; http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/EUR13/002/2009/en/2489f108-4004-4330-8bb5-181d93a3c69a/eur130022009en.pdf