Rights group warns Austria’s response to pro-Palestinian groups restrict freedom of expression

Amnesty Worldwide cautioned in a report on Wednesday that there was a “chilling impact” on the fitting to freedom of expression in Austria as a result of authorities’ responses to activism by protestors and civil rights organizations “expressing solidarity” with Palestinians. The report maintains that undue restrictions on expression and “worry brought on by broad allegations of antisemitism in opposition to the backdrop of racism” have contributed to the impact.

To tell its findings, Amnesty Worldwide interviewed a gaggle of activists, journalists, and representatives of NGOs, who warned that activists “risked being branded ‘antisemitic’ after they criticized Israel’s violations of worldwide regulation.” Government Director of Amnesty Worldwide Austria, Shoura Hashemi, equally notes that there’s a threat that “antisemitism is being instrumentalized and politicized.”

The report criticizes the widespread use of the Worldwide Holocaust Remembrance Alliance Working Definition of Antisemitism (IHRA WDA). The IHRA WDA lists examples of antisemitism, together with “denying the Jewish individuals their proper to self-determination” and “making use of double requirements by requiring of [Israel] a behaviour not anticipated or demanded of some other democratic nation.” Amnesty Worldwide argues that the IHRA WDA is inconsistent with worldwide human rights regulation.

Heba Morayef, Amnesty Worldwide’s Regional Director for the Center East and North Africa, explains that the IHRA WDA has “repeatedly been instrumentalized to suppress authentic criticism of the Israeli authorities’s insurance policies by falsely labelling it antisemitic,” including that the definition “undermines the battle in opposition to real antisemitism.”

Consequently, the report contends that the worry of being labelled antisemitic has created a chilling impact on freedom of expression for activists who help the BDS motion, who’re deterred by court docket proceedings, smear campaigns, and lack of state funding. Amnesty Worldwide highlighted a number of instances of politicians publicly questioning the eligibility of non-governmental organizations for funding as a direct results of positions they’ve taken on the Palestinian trigger.

Beforehand, Amnesty Worldwide had joined 103 different organizations, together with Human Rights Watch, Al-Haq, and the Jewish Community for Palestine, in an enchantment to the UN to not endorse any working definition of antisemitism that might embolden insurance policies that undermine human rights. The rights teams advisable various definitions of antisemitism, together with the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism, which gives examples of conduct it believes that on its face just isn’t antisemitic, together with: “supporting the Palestinian demand for justice” and “[c]riticizing or opposing Zionism as a type of nationalism,” and boycott, divestment, and sanctions protest techniques in opposition to Israel.

The report comes because the free expression and protest rights of pro-Palestine protesters have allegedly been restricted within the UK and Germany. In January 2026, Human Rights Watch reported that UK authorities sought to increase anti-protest laws within the Crime and Policing Invoice. In October 2025, the UN’s Particular Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceable meeting and of affiliation, amongst different UN specialists, warned that German policing of Palestinian solidarity activism has eroded the fitting to peaceable meeting.

The European Conference on Human Rights protects freedom of expression rights within the European Union. Article 10 ensures that freedom of expression consists of “freedom of maintain opinions and to obtain and impression data and concepts with out interference by public authority”, and that restrictions are solely justified when “prescribed by regulation and are mandatory in a democratic society.”