Austria’s Vice-Chancellor Susanne Riess-Passer RKL initiates Removal from Honorary Committee Art. 209new inacceptable The events around the creation in panic of a substitute for the unconstitutional Art. 209 Criminal Code should cost Austria’s Vice-Chancellor Dr. Susanne Riess-Passer her membership in the Honorary Board of the Austrian lesbian and gay rights organisation Rechtskomitee LAMBDA (RKL). As the civil rights organisation announced today, it is unacceptable to keep the doors open for persecution, arbitrariness, discrimination and blackmailing. A replacement for injustice is again injustice and therefore violates the fundamental aims and principles of the association founded in 1991. The bill co-sponsored by the Freedom Party (FPÖ) could not have been possible without the consent of the party’s chair-woman. In addition it has been agreed that RKL will be heard before a decision being taken. Instead the Vice-Chancellor since last December has not been responding to letters and requests for personal meetings and now without more has given her consent to the new injust provision. This despite the fact that two weeks earlier, at Platform Against Art. 209 press conference “No new Art. 209!”, she let her personal envoy, MP Eduard Mainoni, declare that the Freedom Party would not agree to a substitute for the injust Art. 209. Also such a behaviour is inconsistent with a membership in RKL’s Honorary Board. Before Riess-Passer’s consent to the Austrian Government’s defence of Art. 209 before the Constitutional Court already has caused quite considerable displeasure among the membership of RKL. The Board of RKL invited the Vice-Chancellor to submit comments on the application for her removal. The board will deal with the application on 29th August 2002. Rechtskomitee LAMBDA (RKL), founded in 1991, on a supra-partisan and denominational level is working for the implementation of human rights for homo- and bisexual men and women. In its honorary board it convenes so prominent members as the Chairman of the Social-Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ) Dr. Alfred Gusenbauer, President MP Peter Schieder, the Vice-chancellor of Austria and Chairwoman of the Freedom Party (FPÖ) Dr. Susanne Riess-Passer, MP Mag. Terezija Stoisits (Green Party), the well-known child and adolescent psychiatrist Univ.-Prof. Dr. Max Friedrich and the Ombudspersons for Children and Adolescents of Vienna DSA Monika Pinterits und Dr. Anton Schmid, the Secertary General of Amnesty International Austria Mag. Heinz Patzelt and the well-known human rights expert Univ.-Prof. Dr. Manfred Nowak, the sexologists ao.Univ.-Prof. Dr. Josef Christian Aigner and Univ.-Lekt. Dr. Rotraud Perner, the theologian Univ.-Prof. Dr. Kurt Lüthi, entertainer Günter Tolar and many more. More information: Rechtskomitee LAMBDA, (++43/1/876 30 61), [email protected]; www.RKLambda.at 2002-07-10 .