1961: PASUA: Black Self-Organisation Against Racist Violence

Since the late 1950s, students from African and Asian countries have been campaigning to raise the visibility of non-white communities in Austria.

Black people who came to Austria to study were often suspected of being communists and were monitored by the police. For their part, many activists made it a priority to speak out about their experiences of racism—from incidents on the street to problems finding housing.

The Pan-African Students Union in Austria (PASUA), founded in Vienna in December 1961, was one of the first self-organised Black groups in Austria. It launched a series of attention-grabbing initiatives. It pressed for foreign students to have the right to vote in elections of the Austrian Student Union. At the congress of the Union of African Students in Europe in Moscow in March 1964, it caused a political sensation with its statement highlighting discriminatory politics in Austria. Most recently, PASUA advocated vehemently for the young people from African countries who, during a training project run by the Trade Union Federation and the Federation of Austrian Industries, ended up becoming involved in fighting at a Vienna apprentice hostel. Several of the Black people involved were arrested and ultimately deported, and PASUA was forced to disband. The case was widely reported in the international media and resulted in diplomatic consequences. Unokanma Okonjo Bright-Taylor, who later taught sociology at Boston University, publicly condemned the violence she had been subjected to during detention.