AUSTRIA: The Problem of the Refugee

In three short months the pretty, blue-eyed servant girl had found friends, a good job, and happiness under Austrian freedom. But last week 19-year-old Smilja Srca was ordered by the Austrian government to return to Yugoslavia. Leaving her mistress a thank-you note in a language the lady could not read, Smilja told the family children goodbye, crept out into the Alpine night and put a bullet through her head. She survived, but the bullet destroyed the optic nerve connections of both eyes, and she will never see again.

Austrians everywhere felt sorry for Smilja—but having accepted a million refugees from Communism since World War II, they were still in no mood to change Austria's present restrictive policies toward immigrants. Involved in Austria's dilemma is the unsolved international problem of what is a refugee.

Over the postwar years a dozen nationalities have streamed into Austria, seeking asylum, filling refugee camps, and—despite large-scale international aid—burdening the Austrian economy. After the influx of nearly 200,000 Hungarians, Austria in self-defense decided to limit the flow. Reading between the lines of the Geneva Refugee Convention. Austria decided to distinguish economic refugees from political refugees. Since "economic"' refugees are those in quest of a better life —not (in the language of the Convention) fleeing persecution—Austria concluded that they could be deported.

Legally under the code they can. Humanely, as the Smilja incident dramatically illustrated, grave problems are raised in consigning returnees to an uncertain fate back home. Since most Yugoslavs are economic refugees, more than half the 4,852 who crossed the Austro-Yugoslavian border since the crackdown began New Year's Day 1958 have been returned.