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Resort owner: 'Send refugees to Ukraine'

The Local Austria
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Resort owner: 'Send refugees to Ukraine'
Photo: Styrassic Park

The Austrian owner of a dinosaur-themed holiday park has suggested that the province of Styria could tackle its asylum seeker quota by sending refugees to Ukraine, and putting them up in a hotel he owns there.

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Wolfgang Ulrich, owner of the Styrassic Park dinosaur-themed holiday resort stirred up a lot of discussion with his proposal this week, when he suggested that up to 100 asylum seekers could be accommodated in a hotel which he owns in Ukraine, according to a report in the newspaper Kleine Zeitung.

He played down the danger for asylum seekers - pointing out that his hotel is only 1,000 km from Styria's capital Graz, but nearly 2,000 km from the war-torn eastern area of Ukraine.  

He suggested that other hotel owners with property abroad could follow his example, and that this could help solve Austria's refugee problem.

Styria's deputy governor Siegfried Schrittwieser, of the Social Democrats (SPÖ), said the proposal was highly cynical. He suggested that Ulrich was attempting to "profiteer by carting off war refugees seeking our protection to Ukraine". 

In any case, the proposal would be politically difficult to implement because it would be illegal under international law, he added. 

Recently an Austrian politician caused a stink by referring to asylum seekers as "cavemen". 

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