Open letter from hundreds of Austrian police officers demands withdrawal of mandatory vaccination and end of division

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The Austrian “Police Officers for Fundamental Rights and Freedoms” have addressed an open letter directly to Interior Minister Gerhard Karner (ÖVP), calling on him to withdraw the vaccination mandate. Should the vaccination obligation come into force, this would result in personnel bottlenecks in the executive.

The police officers describe themselves in the letter as follows:

We are a group of several hundred police officers from all over Austria who have come together informally because of the current situation. We are united by our concern for the rule of law, our freedom of expression and fundamental rights, and our health.

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The officers admonish the massive division in society and point out that this is also noticeably affecting cooperation within the police corps.

They criticize the one-sided reporting on the only conditionally approved Covid vaccines, whose side effects are largely ignored, and vigorously question the solidarity argument for vaccination.

The police officers state that they must always maintain proportionality in their service – but that a general or job-specific vaccination requirement would not be proportionate, considering all the facts.

Should compulsory vaccination come into force, Interior Minister Karner would have to reckon with the fact “that the Republic of Austria will lose numerously motivated, committed and qualified police officers.”

Read the entire letter:

Open Letter from Policemen for Fundamental Rights and Freedoms -Call for the withdrawal of compulsory vaccination and an end to the division of society

Dear Federal Minister of the Interior Gerhard Karner,

Given the situation in our home country of Austria, we see it as our duty as Police Officers for Fundamental Rights and Freedoms to express our concerns about the planned compulsory vaccination and the division of society.

We are not an association, a trade union, or a legal entity. We are neither right-wing nor left-wing extremists. We are by no means vaccination opponents or even so-called conspiracy theorists.

We are a group of several hundred police officers from all over Austria who have come together informally because of the current situation.

We are united by our concern for the rule of law, our freedom of expression and fundamental rights, and our health. We are both Covid-19 vaccinated and unvaccinated.

We are people of different social backgrounds, and our characters and needs are just as diverse. And as different as we are personally, we are united on this issue.

As civil servants, we are required by Section 43 (2) of the Civil Service Act to ensure in all our conduct that the general public’s trust in the proper performance of our official duties is maintained.

Since the introduction of the 3G regulation at the workplace and the threat of compulsory vaccination, there has also been a noticeable internal division among colleagues into “unvaccinated” and “vaccinated”, which has increasingly led to conflicts and even discrimination against unvaccinated colleagues.

In our opinion, however, this internal division is now impairing our ability to perform our official duties objectively. Colleagues who have not been vaccinated but have constantly been tested are now being threatened with disciplinary measures and charges.

And although the narrative of the “unvaccinated as pandemic drivers” has now been invalidated by scientific findings, it is still poisoning trusting camaraderie and successful teamwork.

In our group, we think that the decision for medical treatment or vaccination of any kind must be made free of any constraints, pressure, or discrimination, taking into account the individual risk assessment.

This decision for or against vaccination MUST be respected and accepted by all parties, including the employer. As police officers, we exercise a dangerous profession in which every official act can theoretically also lead to the death of someone involved.

In this respect, we take the liberty of stating that we can reasonably be expected to take a unique look at and weigh the risks of drug treatment or vaccination and the resulting highly personal decision-making process.

In our opinion, the solidarity towards society often demanded by vaccinated persons, if one speaks out against a Covid 19 vaccination for various reasons, is a somewhat questionable argument that needs to be discussed.

After all, it has been scientifically proven in the meantime that vaccination neither prevents one’s infection nor the transmission of the virus to others. What remains is merely a reduced risk of a severe course of the disease with an unclear temporal dimension.

In addition, as scientific studies show, vaccination carries a high risk of side effects, the severity and frequency of which are not comparable to those of other vaccines developed and tested to date, and the actual extent of which will presumably only become apparent over time, since these side effects are currently (unfortunately) given little media attention.

However, we consider it ethically dubious and morally reprehensible to make a blanket accusation that a group, such as the unvaccinated, is responsible for the collapse of the healthcare system.

Such an approach is not applied to smokers, the obese, extreme athletes, or other groups whose behavior and lifestyle are likely to place an undue burden on the health care system based on solidarity.

There are also many vaccinated people in hospitals, although number games and different ways of counting or stating numbers offer a variable view of both argumentation standpoints, depending on how they are read and interpreted.

We are not physicians, nor can we or do we wish to start a discussion here about the efficacy of Covid 19 vaccination or gene therapy agents.

Nevertheless, different experts from different disciplines have recognized, and it has become clear from practice that vaccination as an isolated solution is unlikely to end the pandemic.

Therefore, we are concerned to see how critical voices from expert circles are immediately suppressed by superiors, employers, politicians, and the media, who deny them any competence and prevent an open discourse on possible other (therapeutic) approaches.

Instead, the vaccination narrative is preached mantra-like, and the country is repeatedly brought to a standstill with lockdowns – with significant consequences for the economy and society.

We view this development with concern because it undermines freedom of expression in a democracy, prevents scientific discourse, and is an expression of a dictatorship of opinion-and it affects us, too.

As policemen and policewomen, we are obligated in all our actions, significantly when interfering with fundamental rights and freedoms, to maintain proportionality and to resort to the measure that serves the purpose in the situation while sparing the rights of a person as much as possible.

Therefore, we consider the planned compulsory vaccination to be no longer proportionate given all the circumstances. It massively interferes with the right to self-determination over one’s own body and can probably not fulfill the purpose of ending the pandemic.

All vaccines and gene therapeutics available against the pandemic have only conditional approval, and their effective duration of efficacy is often unknown. In addition, the side effects have not yet been adequately documented or tested, and they do not provide sufficient protection against infection and transmission, as has now been repeatedly proven scientifically.

In addition to the lack of proportionality, the circumstance of conditional approvals is particularly noteworthy. Accordingly, all those vaccinated against Covid-19 are currently participating in ongoing medical trials, which will continue until 2024, depending on the vaccine.

According to the Nuremberg Code, participation in a medical trial must be without the use of force, fraud, trickery, pressure, deception, or any other form of persuasion or coercion. We, therefore, wish to make it clear that we do NOT want to participate in any such trial or study.

We would therefore like to point out to you that urgently, should there be staff shortages due to compulsory vaccination and the accompanying threatened measures under civil service law; you must, in any case, reckon with the fact that the Republic of Austria will lose numerously motivated, committed and qualified police officers.

We, therefore, ask you to take a look at other countries where attempts have also been made to force a workforce to undergo such vaccinations and where this has failed miserably due to the personnel situation.

We, therefore, ask you

• to support the introduction of no occupational or general compulsory vaccination or any other form of mandatory indirect vaccination in Austria.
• to support that, from a medical point of view and for reasons of equal treatment, 3G in the workplace is wholly suspended, or at least transformed into 1G – namely TESTED – and implemented with internal departmental resources.
• to ensure that discrimination against unvaccinated colleagues and threats of disciplinary action and charges against your employees come to an end.
• that you enable us again to concentrate on our core tasks of police work, we want to be there for the population as a “friend and helper” and not to threaten them during predominantly peaceful demonstrations, which were called into being due to the increasing dissatisfaction of the population with politics.

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