The hipster-right Identitarian youth movement has placed a full face veil on one of Vienna’s most well known statues to protest what they see as the Islamisation of Austria.
According to a press release put out by the group, the action took place in the early hours of Tuesday morning and required heavy duty equipment to accomplish as seen in the groups photos on their Facebook account.
The full face veil was placed on the 65 foot high statue to protest, what the group says in the growing Islamisation of Austria and included a sign at the foot of the statue reading, “Islamisation? No thanks!”
The burka was placed on a statue of former Empress of Austria Maria Theresa who is still much revered in the country for her stewardship and reforms in education and agriculture. She was also well known during her reign for her devout Catholic faith and attempts to convert those of other beliefs to Catholicism.
“If the politicians keep silent about Islamization, we need to draw attention to them all the more clearly! Every day our country is a bit more Islamized,” the group wrote, adding that “in Muslim kindergartens, jihad against unbelievers is called for, individual offenders perform assassinations while screaming “Allahu Akbar!” in Austria. Meanwhile, state-legitimate Islamic experts know that all this has nothing to do with Islam and that Islamization does not take place.”
The assassinations mentioned likely refer to the Graz killer and a Vienna Muslim who attempted to copy his crime by running over pedestrians with his car in the style of the Nice attacks in France earlier this year.
The Identitarians also mentioned the rise in trials for “hate posts” on social media in Austria.
They say that anyone who protests Islamisation “falls under extreme suspicions of extremism and in the worst case ends up in court”. One of their members in Germany recently had his home raided according to the group, because he put up anti-mass migration stickers around his town.
“We therefore demand a remigration of all the illegal and those Muslims who reject our social order,” they write and go on to say, “furthermore, the political persecution of those people who are concerned about the future of Austria and the fact of the Islamization of our country must cease.”
The protest is the latest by the group who in recent months have hung signs against mass migration on the top of Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate and climbed the famous Burgtheater in Vienna. At the latter, they declared that Left wing politicians were hypocrites for promoting mass migration despite evidence that several of the terrorists who took part in the terror attacks in Paris had come into Europe as asylum seekers.