Austrian police today outlawed the right-wing “Organization of National Democratic Students” on grounds of neo-Nazi activities and banned a planned demonstration by the organization to mark the 42nd anniversary of Hitler’s rise to power in Germany.
A police spokesman said the student organization, founded only two months ago as part of the tiny right-wing National Democratic Party (NPD), distributed leaflets claiming the mass murders of Jews under the Nazi regime were “fabricated lies.” The Austrian Resistance Organization had threatened counter demonstrations should police permit the neo-Nazi meeting in front of the Vienna University.
The Socialist Youth Organization, in an open letter to the police, welcomed the ban of the Students League but demanded that the NPD be banned as well for neo-Nazi activities. In a similar demonstration last month, some 500 anti-Fascist students clashed with 80 members of the “National Democratic Students,” Jewish student organizations from the very beginning, had urged a ban of the organization. Jewish student leader Guenther Klodner said the 1955 treaty which granted Austria full independence prohibits neo-Nazi activity.
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