“Yodeled while mowing the lawn: Pensioner fined 800 euros for disturbing Muslims praying”. This is what a status post from Delgrado.tv on Facebook reads!
The article was published on the website on May 1st, 2016!
Here the user is told that a man from Graz (Austria) was sentenced to a fine for “obstructing the practice of religion” and “deprecating religious symbols”.
Bullshit!
If you had researched, you would have found out that there was never a conviction and that this was almost 6 years ago!
Sequentially!
The incident happened in 2010, 6 years ago now. The report was in the Austrian “Kronen Zeitung” at the time.
With high magnification we were finally able to see that the newspaper from November 27, 2010 .
In fact, that article also appeared in November 2010 on the website of the Austrian website “Krone.at”, which took these articles (there were three in total) offline again in December. For good reason, but we'll get to that in a moment.
Almost 6 years old, okay, but does that make the article wrong?
The Austrian media watch blog Kobuk.at was already suspicious of this story at the time, so they simply asked the court and came to the following conclusions:
1. That neighbor yodeled not just on one Friday , but every Friday from 2009 to 2010 while mowing the lawn. The allegations made do not only speak of yodeling, but also of “other creative ways that would have disturbed and mocked the prayers of Muslims.”
2. The Muslims had a loudspeaker in the garden for their prayer sessions, but dismantled it after a few months. The neighbor's taunts continued for several months.
3. The accusation was not at the instigation of the Muslims. After the police intervened several times, they forwarded the case to the public prosecutor, who filed charges because this was a so-called official offense. According to court documents, the Muslims themselves pushed for an amicable solution.
4. There was never a condemnation of the neighbor. The proceedings were discontinued after diversion, in Austria an alternative termination of criminal proceedings, in this case a fine in accordance with Section 200 of the Code of Criminal Procedure.
Conclusion:
Krone.at was probably too embarrassed obvious errors in their reporting Instead of correcting the articles, as is usual in such cases, they were removed without comment on December 1st.
Someone must have found this old newspaper while throwing away the waste paper, photographed it and is now presenting it as a current story.
As usual, the usual suspects like Mannheimer, PI-News & Co jump on the bandwagon and spread the story without reflection on Facebook and in various blogs.
The story itself was quite distorted in the press and also caused ridicule in Germany about the “crazy yodeling process in Austria” (Hamburger Morgenpost).
However, xenophobic Facebook groups and blogs are not really interested in the truth, only in hate speech. So now they goose-step the twisted report about the poor yodeling pensioner. Even if the tones sound very wrong.
Research: Ralf N., mimikamat
Notes:
1) This content reflects the current state of affairs at the time of publication. The reproduction of individual images, screenshots, embeds or video sequences serves to discuss the topic. 2) Individual contributions were created through the use of machine assistance and were carefully checked by the Mimikama editorial team before publication. ( Reason )