FPÖ youth wing upsets minority with "stop Slovenisation" call
Klagenfurt, 8 February - The local chapter of the youth wing of the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) has upset the Slovenian minority in Carinthia with a post to Instagram in which they call on voters to stop the province's "Slovenisation" at the upcoming provincial elections.
Klagenfurt, Austria
Bilingual place signs in Carinthia.
Photo: Bor Slana/STA
The Association of Slovenian Organisations (ZSO) condemned the post on Tuesday with its president Manuel Jug expressing regret that the FPÖ and its Carinthia youth organisation were "trying to incite hatred against our language and our culture, which has always been part of Carinthia's identity".
In the post, the FPÖ Carinthia youth representatives called on voters to vote to remove the Social Democratic Party (SPÖ) from power and thus stop the province's "Slovenisation".
"We condemn such attacks on the Slovenian language and Slovenian culture in the strongest terms and will always stand up against them," Jug wrote in a press release.
He finds it sad that "after so many decades of our life together in Carinthia some people have still not realised that Slovenian enriches the province and its population".
The post has also been condemned by the Austrian Green party candidate Olga Voglauer. "Let us abandon incitement against the Slovenian ethnic community and celebrate cultural diversity and bilingualism in our province," she was quoted as saying by the minority portal of the Austrian public broadcaster ORF.