Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz on Thursday expressed full support for the new justice minister in her confrontation with hate speech over her Bosnian roots.
Alma Zadic is one of four ministers from the Greens in the new government of Conservative Chancellor Kurz, who was sworn in on Tuesday.
She is the first Austrian of immigrant background to enter the government.
Zadic, whose family fled the conflict in BiH when she was 10, recently faced a spate of online insults over her origins. Austrian media reported that she had been offered continuous police protection. On Thursday, Kurz wrote on Twitter that “online hate speech is a disgusting phenomenon of our time. There’s no room for this kind of behavior! ”
He added that the government would “act absolutely against hate speech on the net”, regardless of the source of such messages, and added: “Alma Zadic and all others affected by this have my full support.”, KLix.ba news portal reports.
