Despite Promises, Austria Puts Up Barbed Wire Fences to Keep Refugees Out

The Austrian chancellor, who had promised not to construct any new fences, announced a new fence to be constructed on Slovenia border.

Austrian chancellor Werner Faymann said earlier that the country has plans to construct barriers in Spielfeld on the Slovenia-Austria border so to prevent a massive influx of migrants.

“The embankment was secured with help from rolls of barbed wire,” a policeman told Kleine Zeitung.

Faymann promised that the specifications would be set up by experts and would not include barbed wire, a matter which he had criticized neighboring Hungary for using.

“This is not about a border barrier of several kilometres,” he stated on 28 October at a press conference. “We are not fencing Austria in.”

The photos of the fence in Austria went viral and prompted public outrage causing Luxemburg foreign minister Jean Asselborn to rail against the barbed wire barriers. “Walls, fences and barbed wire cannot be part of the European Union,” he claimed.

He expressed concerns that European values would be “destroyed by such policies,” unless the EU took measures to change them and deal with the xenophobia stemming from the migrant crisis.