October 3, 2002	Thursday	Rajab 25, 1423

VIENNA: Under a new ruling this month, Austria is trying to stem the flood of asylum-seekers by turning hundreds out onto the streets. In the words of Interior Minister Ernst Strasser, they will be “invited” to go home. Already with no prospect of jobs, their new homelessness will be a further incentive to leave.

Head of the refugee advisory organisation at Traiskirchen Refugee centre, Christoph Riedl, said in a newspaper interview on Wednesday he reckoned a further 500 would hit the streets this week, including women and children.

Strasser says he is particularly trying to stop Kosovo Albanians. His ministry says they are “economic refugees” lured to Austria by false promises of human trafficking gangs, and they have no prospect of being granted asylum.

The new ruling says those no longer eligible for state-financed board and lodging are people from the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (excepting minorities from Kosovo), Indonesia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Russia (excepting Chechnya), and Cro-atia. But the Catholic human rights organization Caritas says the ban also includes people from Nepal, Mongolia, Sri Lanka and Nigeria.

Conservative People’s Party (VP) minister Strasser has drawn fire from all sides. Human rights groups accused him of inhumanity, newspapers of a “panic reaction”, and against the spirit of EU accords.

This week, about 100 Kosovo Albanians at the Traiskirchen Centre 30 kilometres south of Vienna staged a sit-down strike against the new regulations.

Austria, with long borders to Central and East European states, has long had a problem of refugees and migrants entering the country illegally. But recently the pressure has grown enormously. Last year there were a record 30,000 applications for asylum.—dpa