Last year 2,889 were deported by plane. Death appears to be a calculated risk in enforcing the restriction of rights to asylum. Sympathy, consideration or attention to human rights are not provided for by law. The fact that hardly any other airline outside of Balkan Air is prepared to undertake deportations gives an indication of the brutal measures used in effecting them. Human rights organisations argue that the measures used in Omafuma's case are in no way unusual.
Some lawyers use all available legal means.
Yet the brutal death of Markus Omafuma and the determined defence of the forcible deportation measures being used have a wider significance than the almost daily incitement of racism in the Alpine republic, directed especially against Africans. The Social Democratic Party and its governing head are using the case to make a definite shift to the right. By law, every attempt by refugees to enter Austria by land is to be taken as a basis for the non-recognition of the right to asylum. The right to appeal is to be cut back and human rights information to be further reduced. All nations bordering on Austria are to be defined as safe states, even though it has been determined that neighbouring Slovakia is not secure and Hungary only qualifies conditionally.