I’ve suffered death threats and racial abuse, but this is my party’s chance to shape policy for the better

Shaking the hand of the Austrian president, Alexander Van der Bellen, during my inauguration as Austria’s justice minister in January was a profoundly moving moment for me and for my family. But it was moving also for a great many people who came to Austria as migrants or refugees. To see a former child refugee from the Bosnian war sworn in as a government minister in the country to which her family fled in 1995 was for many hugely symbolic – a signal that they, too, had now been fully accepted as part of Austrian society, with the right to participate in the country’s politics and even to shape it.

But from day one, becoming the embodiment of this acceptance also unleashed a torrent of hate directed at me from the right and from proponents of the far right in Austria. Resentments that had been held down over years resurfaced. In just two months, the Austrian authorities have recorded more than 25,500 incidents of publicly made hate speech and hate comments directed at or about me, from racist insults to calls to go back where I came from. Because some of these messages included credible death threats, the Austrian security services issued me with 24-hour protection. “A bullet is reserved for you,” one of these messages said.