A recently squatted building was publicly opened this morning in Calais, on rue des Prêtres. The building was an abandoned homeless shelter capable of accommodating at least 50 people. People started gathering outside the building around 11 o’clock this morning in support of the people already barricaded inside. A neighbour-collaborator called the cops, even going as far as to offer them a hand when they arrived. By around 2.00 some 12 vans of riot cops had the building surrounded, and those inside had already climbed up on the roof. Around 4.30, they started pushing away the people outside and smashing down the front door of the house with a battering ram. The deputy mayor of Calais who’s name isn’t important enough to publish was holding the battering ram together with the riot cops. Not managing to break down the door, they smashed in a window and opened the front door from the inside. The pigs then climbed on the roof from inside the attic and took the people down one by one, dragging them through the front door and into the arrest van.
Seeing as the people gathered in support outside had been pushed back and charged by the riot cops, we haven’t got many eye-witness details of the eviction. All attempts to film the scene from the outside were blocked by the cops. All those who were inside the building were taken away in arrest vans. The cops told us that they’d been taken to the central police station in the city, but for the moment we haven’t been able to verify their whereabouts or their situation.
