Presentation of the Bruno Kreisky Awards for services to human rights

An event organised by the Bruno Kreisky Foundation

In memory of Prof Alfred Ströer, retired member of the National Council and founding director of the Bruno Kreisky Foundation for Services to Human Rights

National Library, Josefplatz 1, 1010 Vienna 9 June 2017, 6.30 pm

Registration under: preisverleihung@kreisky.org

Welcome:
Dr Johanna Rachinger, Director General of the Austrian National Library
Governor Prof Dr Ewald Nowotny, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Bruno Kreisky Foundation for Services to Human Rights
University Professor DDr Oliver Rathkolb, Member of the Board, Bruno Kreisky Foundation for Services to Human Rights
Laudatio: Dr Marianne Schulze, Human Rights Consultant, Awarding of the Bruno Kreisky Prize to: Queer Base
Laudatio: Dr Anna Sporrer, Vice-President of the VwgH, presentation of the Bruno Kreisky Prize to: Christine Okresek and the team of the Liebhartstal home for unaccompanied minor refugees
Laudatio: Barbara Frischmuth, writer, presentation of the Bruno Kreisky Prize to: Aslı Erdoğan will accept the prize on behalf of her lawyer Erdal Doğan.
Musical accompaniment: AUREUM Saxophone quartet
followed by a reception in the Van Swieten Hall of the Austrian National Library

Award winners 2017

ASLI ERDOGAN
Throughout her life, Aslı Erdoğan, who conducted research as a physicist at Cern in Geneva and was a guest writer in exile at the International House of Authors in Graz from 2012 to 2013, has actively and unreservedly campaigned for the realisation of human rights. In all her publications, the committed human rights activist Erdogan uses the manifestations of suffering and injustice, which she repeatedly traces, as a yardstick for orientation. Mrs Aslı Erdoğan is currently being prosecuted in Turkey. She has been charged with four different crimes, including her column and membership of an advisory board in a Kurdish newspaper. She was arrested on charges of destroying the unity and integrity of the state and membership of a terrorist organisation. She was released on bail on 29 December 2016, but is currently banned from travelling abroad.
QUEER BASE
Queer Base is an organisation of people with and without refugee experience in Vienna that supports lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex refugees and queer people (LGTBIQ) in their asylum procedure and afterwards, as well as in organising accommodation. LGTBIQ are criminalised and threatened by physical, psychological and sexualised violence in over 70 countries around the world. In Austria, it has long been possible to apply for asylum under the title of „member of a social group“ due to homophobic or trans-phobic persecution. However, there are structural problems that worsen the situation of LGTBIQ refugees.
CHRiSTiNE OKRESEK and the team at Liebhartstal House for unaccompanied refugee minors
uMF Haus liebhartstal was opened in August 2015. The home is run by the Arbeiter-Samariter-Bund and is located in the 16th district of Vienna in a former retirement home. There are currently 60 unaccompanied underage girls and boys from Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia and other African countries living in three co-educational residential groups, as well as a residential group for eighteen to twenty-five-year-olds. Christine Okresek and her dedicated team have been running UMF Haus Liebhartstal since autumn 2015.