Swiss People’s Party youth strategist denies knowledge of Martin Sellner

Martin Sellner is a prominent Austrian far-right figure known for his talk about “remigration”. KEYSTONE

The head of strategy of the right-wing Swiss People’s Party’s youth wing, Sarah Regez, has denied any past knowledge of the Austrian far-right activist Martin Sellner. The Austrian, who holds hardline views on migration, has been barred from the UK, the US and Germany.

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In an interview with the German-language paper Sonntagszeitung on Sunday, Regez said that she had been an active member of a group that was critical of the government’s anti-Covid measures and had been taken to a protest in Switzerland in May 2023 that had been attended by Sellner “without knowing what it was about” or who the far-right Austrian activist was.

“I didn’t know the name Sellner at all at the time,” Regez continued. She also had no idea who had organised the event. She only remembers that she found the first presentation very boring and that the speakers had not left a lasting impression on her.

Only recently heard of Sellner

She said she had only recently heard of Sellner when the media reported on the cancelled event which the Austrian had tried to attend in Aargau in northern Switzerland. She was therefore “completely surprised” when the Sonntagsblick newspaper then wrote that she had attended an event with him, she said.

In mid-March, the Aargau cantonal police prevented the far-right Austrian figure from giving a talk. The event had been organised by the far-right Swiss group Junge Tat. The Aargau youth wing of the People’s Party initially showed solidarity with Sellner, but later distanced itself from his extremist positions.

“Secret meeting is complete nonsense”

On March 31, Sonntagsblick reported that Regez had taken part in a secret meeting with Sellner in May 2023, which had also been attended by members of Junge Tat. Six other cantonal youth wings of the People’s Party then called on Regez to resign from her position as head of strategy.

The term “secret meeting” was “complete nonsense”, said Regez. Everyone should know that she had attended this and many other events. However, people should not conclude from this that she automatically shares the opinion of the speakers, she said.

Regez criticised recent media coverage, which she said was “an orchestrated campaign” against the youth wing of the People’s Party, against its president, Nils Fiechter, and against herself. A “non-event” is being used as an opportunity “to shoot at a democratically legitimised party from all sides”, she said.

Sellner wants to deport foreigners

Sellner used to be the head of Austria’s far-right Identitarian Movement and is now banned from entering Germany. According to his new book with the same title, he understands remigration to mean that people of foreign origins must leave Germany en masse, including people with a German passport and even those under duress.

Regez said that she had also used the word remigration in her tweets. However, she understood the term to have the original semantic meaning of “return migration”. She said it stands for everything that the party has always demanded: that criminal and illegal migrants should be deported and that the initiatives to stop mass immigration and deport foreigners should be consistently implemented.

Adapted from German by DeepL/dkk/sb

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