International Human Rights Tribunal
Encyclopedia
The International Human Rights Tribunal (IHRT) took place in Vienna
(Austria
) in June of 1995. It was chaired by environmental and human rights activist Freda Meissner-Blau
and Gerhard Oberschlick
, editor of FORVM
, and was dedicated to the persecution of lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender persons in Austria from 1945 to 1995.
decided not to accept the offer to chair this committee, there was ample support worldwide. Amongst the members were Jacques Gaillot
, bishop of Partenia
, politicians Mel Read
(UK), Svend Robinson
(Canada), Claudia Roth
(Germany) and Terezija Stoisits
(Austria), writers Kuno Knöbl, Christine Nöstlinger
and Gerhard Roth
, developmentalist Robert Chambers
(Frankfurt), sociologist Bernd Marin
and human rights lawyer Manfred Nowak
(both Vienna), as well as other academic scholars like Igor S. Kon (Moskow), Anton Pelinka (Innsbruck), Asa G. Rachmanova (Saint Petersburg), Douglas Sanders (Vancouver), Theo Sandfort (Utrecht) and Christopher Williams (Preston, UK), as well as human rights activists, publicists und LGBT activists from Belgium, Denmark, France, Netherlands, Norway and Peru.
, philosophers Rudolf Burger
and Oliver Marchart, writers Josef Haslinger
, Doron Rabinovici
and Katharina Riese, politicians Friedrun Huemer (The Greens) and Volker Kier (Liberal Forum
), actress Mercedes Echerer
, psychotherapists Rotraud Perner, Alfred Pritz and Jutta Zinnecker, judge Norbert Gerstberger, lawyers Nadja Lorenz and Alfred Noll, cultural scientist and activist Dieter Schrage, four journalists, an editor, two unionists, two medical doctors as well as several human rights activists. The composition of the jury changed in each of the seven parts of the tribunal - according to the specific expertise of the jurors. For example, the jury for VII. Discrimination in the general public consisted of four journalists, an editor, a sociologist, writer Haslinger, theologian Lüthi, actress Echerer and psychotherapist Perner.
served as attorney-general. He headed a team of prominent representatives from the Austrian LGBT
movement, amongst them HOSI Wien activists Gudrun Hauer, Kurt Krickler and Waltraud Riegler and Transgender
representative Elisabeth Piesch.
The prosecution brought forward charges in seven different fields:
Testimonies were brought up to document the charges. They reported about police persecution, imprisonment, psychiatric treatment and electroshock therapies, loss of jobs and public humiliation.
In each case the Republic of Austria was charged with neglecting its human rights obligations and therefore broken its own commitment to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
adopted by the United Nations General Assembly
in Paris in 1948.
On the first day of the tribunal, MP Johannes Jarolim, member of the ruling SPÖ
, took place on the defence bench - as amicus curiae, not defending the republic, but rather stating that he agreed with all the changes in the penal code demanded. He referred to the refusal of coalition partner ÖVP
which was effectively blocking every move in this field.
In hindsight the refusal of Austrian politicians to defend themselves at the tribunal can be seen as their silent acknowledgment - already in 1995 - that Austria's human rights practice in this field did not fulfill the internationally requested standards. Nevertheless it has not been clarified till today, why it took still 15 years to abolish legal persecution and discrimination.
The tribunal was intended to be the first in a series. In 1998 the 2nd International Human Rights Tribunal was supposed to accuse racism
and xenophobia
in Austria, but the attempt failed - due to lack of financial means. There are still plans to dedicate the next tribunal to the death penalty.
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
(Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
) in June of 1995. It was chaired by environmental and human rights activist Freda Meissner-Blau
Freda Meissner-Blau
Freda Meissner-Blau is an Austrian politician, activist, and prominent figurehead in the Austrian environmental movement. She was a founder and the federal spokesperson of the Austrian Green Party.-Early life:...
and Gerhard Oberschlick
Gerhard Oberschlick
Gerhard Fritz Oberschlick is an Austrian essayist. From 1985 to 1995 he was the editor of the political and cultural magazine FORVM. Today he serves as the literary executor of Günther Anders.- Life and career :...
, editor of FORVM
FORVM
FORVM was an Austrian cultural and political magazine, published in Vienna from 1954 till 1995, founded by Friedrich Hansen-Loeve, Felix Hubalek, Alexander Lernet-Holenia und Friedrich Torberg with the financial and logistical support of the Congress for Cultural Freedom...
, and was dedicated to the persecution of lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender persons in Austria from 1945 to 1995.
The International Committee
As the organizers feared repressions by the Republic of Austria, they asked prominent figures from the international human rights community to join the International Committee and thus protect the endeavour. Although Queen Margrethe II of DenmarkMargrethe II of Denmark
Margrethe II is the Queen regnant of the Kingdom of Denmark. In 1972 she became the first female monarch of Denmark since Margaret I, ruler of the Scandinavian countries in 1375-1412 during the Kalmar Union.-Early life:...
decided not to accept the offer to chair this committee, there was ample support worldwide. Amongst the members were Jacques Gaillot
Jacques Gaillot
The Most Reverend Dr. Jacques Jean Edmond Georges Monseigneur Gaillot , Titular Bishop of Partenia, is a French Catholic clergyman and social activist. He was from 1982 to 1995 Bishop of Évreux in France...
, bishop of Partenia
Partenia
Partenia is a Roman Catholic titular see in present-day Sétif Province, Algeria. Formerly a major city, the episcopal see was abandoned and consumed by the Sahara desert in the 5th century...
, politicians Mel Read
Mel Read
Imelda Mary Read, known as Mel Read is a British politician, and former Labour Party member of the European Parliament for the East Midlands.She became an MEP in 1994, representing the Nottingham and Leicestershire North West constituency until 1999....
(UK), Svend Robinson
Svend Robinson
Svend Robinson is a former Canadian politician. He was a Member of Parliament in the Canadian House of Commons from 1979 to 2004, representing the suburban Vancouver-area constituency of Burnaby for the New Democratic Party...
(Canada), Claudia Roth
Claudia Roth
Claudia Benedikta Roth is a German Green Party politician and one of the two current party chairs, together with Cem Özdemir.- Biography :...
(Germany) and Terezija Stoisits
Terezija Stoisits
thumb|Terezija Stoisits, 2006Terezija Stoisits [] is an Austrian politician of the Green Party. Since July 2007 she serves as an ombudswoman of the Republic of Austria...
(Austria), writers Kuno Knöbl, Christine Nöstlinger
Christine Nöstlinger
Christine Nöstlinger is an Austrian writer.By her own admission, Nöstlinger was a wild and angry child. After finishing high school, she wanted to become an artist, and studied graphic arts at the Academy of Applied Arts in Vienna...
and Gerhard Roth
Gerhard Roth
Gerhard Roth is an Austrian writer.-Life:The son of a medical practitioner, Roth originally also wanted to study medicine himself, but soon focussed on literature. Initially, he earned his living as a computer programmer; he has been a freelance writer since 1976...
, developmentalist Robert Chambers
Robert Chambers (development scholar)
- His approach:Since the 1980s, he has been one of the leading advocates for putting the poor, destitute and marginalised at the centre of the processes of development policy. In particular he argues they should be taken into account when the development problem is identified, policy formulated and...
(Frankfurt), sociologist Bernd Marin
Bernd Marin
thumb|upright=1.7|Bernd Marin Bernd Marin is an Austrian social scientist.- Life and career :...
and human rights lawyer Manfred Nowak
Manfred Nowak
Manfred Nowak is an Austrian human rights lawyer.Nowak was a student of Felix Ermacora, and cooperated with him until Ermacora's death in 1995. They co-founded the Ludwig Boltzmann Institut für Menschenrechte in 1992...
(both Vienna), as well as other academic scholars like Igor S. Kon (Moskow), Anton Pelinka (Innsbruck), Asa G. Rachmanova (Saint Petersburg), Douglas Sanders (Vancouver), Theo Sandfort (Utrecht) and Christopher Williams (Preston, UK), as well as human rights activists, publicists und LGBT activists from Belgium, Denmark, France, Netherlands, Norway and Peru.
The Senate
Chaired by Meissner-Blau and Oberschlick, the jury of the tribunal consisted of prominent personalities from Austria's civil society, amongst them theologian Kurt LüthiKurt Lüthi
Kurt Lüthi was a Swiss Reformed theologian and a professor at the University Vienna.- Life :Lüthi studied Protestant theology in Bern and Basel, amongst his teachers were Karl Barth, Karl Ludwig Schmidt and Oscar Cullmann. In 1949 he became pastor at the Reformed church of the Canton of Bern,...
, philosophers Rudolf Burger
Rudolf Burger
Rudolf Burger is an Austrian philosopher.- Life and career :Burger was born in the year of the occupation and the annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany, called Anschluss. His parents were active communists...
and Oliver Marchart, writers Josef Haslinger
Josef Haslinger
Josef Haslinger is an Austrian writer.Haslinger was born in Zwettl, Lower Austria. He studied philosophy, drama and Germanic studies...
, Doron Rabinovici
Doron Rabinovici
Doron Rabinovici is an Israeli-Austrian writer, historian and essayist. He was born in Tel Aviv in 1961 and moved to Vienna in 1964.-Overview:...
and Katharina Riese, politicians Friedrun Huemer (The Greens) and Volker Kier (Liberal Forum
Liberal Forum
The Liberal Forum is a small classical liberal party in Austria. The party is currently led by Angelika Mlinar, and is a member of the Liberal International and the European Liberal Democrat and Reform Party.-Founding:...
), actress Mercedes Echerer
Mercedes Echerer
Raina A. Mercedes Echerer is an Austrian film and stage actress, host of TV and radio shows, and politician.From 1999 to 2004 she was Member of the European Parliament for the Austrian Green Party, part of the European Greens, although she was not member of the party...
, psychotherapists Rotraud Perner, Alfred Pritz and Jutta Zinnecker, judge Norbert Gerstberger, lawyers Nadja Lorenz and Alfred Noll, cultural scientist and activist Dieter Schrage, four journalists, an editor, two unionists, two medical doctors as well as several human rights activists. The composition of the jury changed in each of the seven parts of the tribunal - according to the specific expertise of the jurors. For example, the jury for VII. Discrimination in the general public consisted of four journalists, an editor, a sociologist, writer Haslinger, theologian Lüthi, actress Echerer and psychotherapist Perner.
The Prosecution
Human rights activist Christian MichelidesChristian Michelides
Christian Michelides is an Austrian psychotherapist. He is the director of Lighthouse Wien.-Life and Career:In 1973 Michelides started to work as an opera critic of a provincial newspaper called Südost Tagespost. He earned his high school diploma in 1978...
served as attorney-general. He headed a team of prominent representatives from the Austrian LGBT
LGBT
LGBT is an initialism that collectively refers to "lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender" people. In use since the 1990s, the term "LGBT" is an adaptation of the initialism "LGB", which itself started replacing the phrase "gay community" beginning in the mid-to-late 1980s, which many within the...
movement, amongst them HOSI Wien activists Gudrun Hauer, Kurt Krickler and Waltraud Riegler and Transgender
Transgender
Transgender is a general term applied to a variety of individuals, behaviors, and groups involving tendencies to vary from culturally conventional gender roles....
representative Elisabeth Piesch.
The prosecution brought forward charges in seven different fields:
- Penal Code and constitutionConstitutionA constitution is a set of fundamental principles or established precedents according to which a state or other organization is governed. These rules together make up, i.e. constitute, what the entity is...
- Civil registryCivil registryCivil registration is the system by which a government records the vital events of its citizens and residents. The resulting repository or database is called civil register or registry, or population registry. The primary purpose of civil registration is to create legal documents that are used to...
, familyFamilyIn human context, a family is a group of people affiliated by consanguinity, affinity, or co-residence. In most societies it is the principal institution for the socialization of children...
, marriageMarriageMarriage is a social union or legal contract between people that creates kinship. It is an institution in which interpersonal relationships, usually intimate and sexual, are acknowledged in a variety of ways, depending on the culture or subculture in which it is found...
, domestic partnershipDomestic partnershipA domestic partnership is a legal or personal relationship between two individuals who live together and share a common domestic life but are neither joined by marriage nor a civil union... - ReparationsWiedergutmachungThe German word Wiedergutmachung after World War II refers to the reparations that the German government agreed to pay to the direct survivors of the Holocaust, and to those who were made to work as forced labour or who otherwise became victims of the Nazis.The noun Wiedergutmachung is the general...
for Nazi repression - AIDSAIDSAcquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...
and the social consequences - PrisonPrisonA prison is a place in which people are physically confined and, usually, deprived of a range of personal freedoms. Imprisonment or incarceration is a legal penalty that may be imposed by the state for the commission of a crime...
, psychiatryPsychiatryPsychiatry is the medical specialty devoted to the study and treatment of mental disorders. These mental disorders include various affective, behavioural, cognitive and perceptual abnormalities...
, armed servicesArmed ServicesArmed Services is a collective term that refers to the major organisational entities of national armed forces, so named because they service a combat need in a specific combat environment. In most states Armed Services include the Army also known as Land Force or Ground Force, Navy also know a...
, policePoliceThe police is a personification of the state designated to put in practice the enforced law, protect property and reduce civil disorder in civilian matters. Their powers include the legitimized use of force...
, asylumAsylum- Politics and society :* Asylum , places of refuge in ancient Greece and Rome* Right of asylum or political asylum* Church asylum or sanctuary, a right to be safe from arrest in the sanctuary of a church or temple... - Discrimination in the working environmentWorkWork may refer to:Human labor:* Employment* House work* Labor , measure of the work done by human beings* Manual labor, physical work done by people* Wage labor, in which a worker sells their labor and an employer buys it...
- Discrimination in the general publicGeneral PublicGeneral Public were a band formed by The Beat vocalists, Dave Wakeling and Ranking Roger, and which included former members of Dexy's Midnight Runners, The Specials and The Clash...
Testimonies were brought up to document the charges. They reported about police persecution, imprisonment, psychiatric treatment and electroshock therapies, loss of jobs and public humiliation.
In each case the Republic of Austria was charged with neglecting its human rights obligations and therefore broken its own commitment to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a declaration adopted by the United Nations General Assembly . The Declaration arose directly from the experience of the Second World War and represents the first global expression of rights to which all human beings are inherently entitled...
adopted by the United Nations General Assembly
United Nations General Assembly
For two articles dealing with membership in the General Assembly, see:* General Assembly members* General Assembly observersThe United Nations General Assembly is one of the five principal organs of the United Nations and the only one in which all member nations have equal representation...
in Paris in 1948.
The Defence
In six of the seven parts of the tribunal the defence bench remained empty. The Republic of Austria refused to defend itself. Most of the political representatives had either ignored the invitation or passed it on to some department of their own ministry which never replied. Only one lengthy letter from Roland Miklau, departmental head in the Ministry of Justice, explained why he preferred not to participate.On the first day of the tribunal, MP Johannes Jarolim, member of the ruling SPÖ
SPO
- Technology :SPO: Microsoft SharePoint Online, Microsoft Cloud Computing, Office 365. See Microsoft Online Services-Economics:* Secondary Public Offering, an equity capital market instrument...
, took place on the defence bench - as amicus curiae, not defending the republic, but rather stating that he agreed with all the changes in the penal code demanded. He referred to the refusal of coalition partner ÖVP
OVP
OVP is a three-letter abbreviation that may refer to:*The Office of the Vice President of the United States*The Office of the Vice President of the Philippines*OVP , a light sub-machine gun developed in Italy...
which was effectively blocking every move in this field.
7 Verdicts
The Republic of Austria was found guilty in all seven fields. However, the jury not always agreed completely with the demands of the prosecution team. For example, in part I. Penal Code and constitution the attorney-general requested the abolition of the pornography law. The jury did not agree on this demand.The Effects of the Tribunals
Although mostly ignored by the press, nearly all verdicts and requests of the tribunal have since been implemented in Austrian law:- 1996: §§ 220 and 221 of the Austrian Penal Code abolished
- 1998: Penal Code modified, same-sex partners no longer obliged to testify against their partners
- 2002: The age of consentAge of consentWhile the phrase age of consent typically does not appear in legal statutes, when used in relation to sexual activity, the age of consent is the minimum age at which a person is considered to be legally competent to consent to sexual acts. The European Union calls it the legal age for sexual...
equalisied for all sexual orientationSexual orientationSexual orientation describes a pattern of emotional, romantic, or sexual attractions to the opposite sex, the same sex, both, or neither, and the genders that accompany them. By the convention of organized researchers, these attractions are subsumed under heterosexuality, homosexuality,...
s - 2003: Removal of all records and data of those sentenced under § 209 from police data banks
- 2004: Sexual orientationSexual orientationSexual orientation describes a pattern of emotional, romantic, or sexual attractions to the opposite sex, the same sex, both, or neither, and the genders that accompany them. By the convention of organized researchers, these attractions are subsumed under heterosexuality, homosexuality,...
included in the Anti-discrimination lawAnti-discrimination lawAnti-discrimination law refers to the law on people's right to be treated equally. Some countries mandate that in employment, in consumer transactions and in political participation people may be dealt with on an equal basis regardless of sex, race, ethnicity, nationality, sexuality and sometimes... - 2005: Homosexuals recognized as victim-group of Nazi oppression
- 2009: Sex-change in documents no longer dependent on completion of sex-change operations
- 2009: Annulment of Nazi verdicts against homosexuals made possible
- 2010: Domestic partnershipDomestic partnershipA domestic partnership is a legal or personal relationship between two individuals who live together and share a common domestic life but are neither joined by marriage nor a civil union...
s for lesbian and gay couples recognized by the law
In hindsight the refusal of Austrian politicians to defend themselves at the tribunal can be seen as their silent acknowledgment - already in 1995 - that Austria's human rights practice in this field did not fulfill the internationally requested standards. Nevertheless it has not been clarified till today, why it took still 15 years to abolish legal persecution and discrimination.
The tribunal was intended to be the first in a series. In 1998 the 2nd International Human Rights Tribunal was supposed to accuse racism
Racism
Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...
and xenophobia
Xenophobia
Xenophobia is defined as "an unreasonable fear of foreigners or strangers or of that which is foreign or strange". It comes from the Greek words ξένος , meaning "stranger," "foreigner" and φόβος , meaning "fear."...
in Austria, but the attempt failed - due to lack of financial means. There are still plans to dedicate the next tribunal to the death penalty.