Solidarity groups and Slovenian government calling for investigation of the provocative operation at resistance memorial site
~ Joseph King ~
On Sunday 27 July, Austrian police raided an anti-fascist youth camp held at the Peršman Homestead in a remote area of the state of Carinthia. The site, itself a local institution for preserving the memory of resistance to the Nazis, was hosting an international anti-fascist education camp. Around 60 people were in attendance when police vehicles suddenly appeared on site and were accompanied further by helicopters, drones, and a canine unit. Three people were temporarily arrested and one person injured.
The Peršman Homestead has become one of the key memorial sites for Carinthian-Slovenians. During the Nazi era, residents of the farm supported the anti-fascist liberation struggle and on April 25 1945 Nazi units murdered 11 Slovenian members residing on the farm. The site is a memorial to the crimes committed against the Carinthian-Slovenian civilian population, and dedicated to the preserving the history of their resistance.
This past weekend the Vienna-based Club of Slovenian Students (KSŠŠD) in cooperation with the Peršman Association hosted a camp dedicated to the 80th anniversary of the end of the second world war, with lectures and workshops on the forms of collective remembrance and the role of anti-fascism in Austria.
According to a press release from the Peršman Association, “identity checks and house searches were carried out without judicial authorisation”. Three reasons have been provided for the large-scale, aggressive police operation: nature protection, camping violations, and that an anti-fascist camp represented an immoral approach to the memorial. Organisers of the camp as rejected these reasonings given the facts that the camp was on the museum’s property, held with full support by the museum operators, and was attended by descendants of the resistance fighters and Nazi victims.
In the process of the raid, the police injured one person, later treated onsite, while attempting to force their way into the museum building and temporality arrested three people for resisting state power. The disproportionate police action, alongside the unfounded reasons for the raid, are seen as a continuation of the state’s historic violation of the fundamental right of Slovenians in Carinthia. The Peršman Association have called for an immediate investigation, saying it is ” and said that, although the aggressive actions will not unsettle their work, “it is “unacceptable that the police want to dictate to descendants of Nazi victims and resistance fighters what commemoration should look like and criminally sanction self-determined commemoration in the museum”.
Since the weekend’s actions, the call for a further investigation from the organisers has been taken up by the Slovenian government, international anti-fascist organisations and Slovenian solidarity groups.
Photos: Damian Smrečnik/Novice