Last night, as 2.500 – 4.000 people took the streets for a “Reclaim the Streets” parade in solidarity with the biggest squat of the city, BINZ, which exists since 2006 and shall be evicted in April! Colourful dressed and with several sound systems and even a car with a live punk band on it, the big crowd moved out of the Binz at 23:00, where only a hand full of police was waiting and totally surprised. Until 23:45 the parade was loud and joyful, pyrotechnics was fired and not a single house on the route towards downtown wasn’t sprayed with dozens of tags, stencils and graffitis. At 23:45, as the crowd reached Wiedikon Train Station, police started firing rubber bullets and tear gas, and with support of their water cannon vehicle, they tried to disperse the RTS.
As a result, within minutes the whole plaza in front of the train station was empty (the dancing crowd moved to other streets) and the latest chapter of the “battle for Zurich” started. Until 1am the RTS tried to reach the inner city, but didn’t came closer as Helvetiaplatz/Kanzleistrasse/Langstrasse. Behind the dancing crowd, hundreds of black mummed people saved the RTS route with barricades, which were set on fire, and kept the police with stones and bottles on distance. In this time, a branch of the supermarket chain “Coop” was looted, a KMPG office building was damaged, also a branch of ZKB Bank and Raiffeisen Bank. An UBS (bank) branch was heavily damaged, also the police station Wiedikon was attacked and several police cars were heavily damaged, as swiss television SRF reports. At least one car was set on fire, the whole route is still marked with burnt barricades and thousands of graffitis on all walls … The police made no arrests, but fired thousands of rubber bullets and hundreds of tear gas cans. The RTS moved back savely to the Binz, which was reached at 2am. The police only once tried to come closer to the Binz at this time, and rushed along the Uetlibergstrasse (where the Binz is located) with open side door of their van to fire rubber bullets … and was immediatly covered with a rain of stones and bottles out of the crowd. The party went on till late morning, no police, no arrests, no hurts, but “damage” (especially the tons of graffitis) which goes maybe up to a million franks … Binz bleibt Binz – too Binz to fail!
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0I3uApfds2E
Source : https://www.indymedia.nl
