The ADM eviction has started on monday morning, 7 january 2019. Time line, pictures, videos and more news are to be found on Indymedia Nederland. No statement at the moment about this eviction on the ADM website. More news to follow as soon as possible…
PRESS RELEASE, Amsterdam 9 January 2019
Municipality of Amsterdam observes large-scale destruction of Community ADM
Mayor Halsema of Amsterdam today received through neighbourhood director Ferry den Edel and the visibly concerned civil servant Ivar Schreurs the observation that most of the houses, properties and workshops belonging to our community ADM yesterday were destroyed ‘by third parties’.
The ‘eviction under administrative coercion’ carried out by the municipality of Amsterdam is not only in violation of international law, the UN interim measure to which the Netherlands is bound (including Vienna Treaty Article 26), but was also an indefensible execution of an eviction under administrative coercion as referred to in our national law.
For after the municipality had carried out the eviction halfway, by removing us from our site but not the goods of our Community, the site including our goods was transferred to a third party, the cadastral owner of the site, Chidda Vastgoed, with which the municipality did not complete the eviction under administrative pressure.
Chidda Vastgoed had a clear plan for this because immediately many bulldozers, cranes and excavators of tenant Koole Maritiem drove into the area and within a few hours they turned our hamlet into a true battlefield. They ruined or destroyed many homes and goods. Yesterday afternoon this was stopped by the municipality.
But let us be. The responsibility for our property lay with the municipality. We are of the opinion that such violence against a Community, made possible by the state, would be immediately condemned outside the Netherlands if it did not include a binding UN interim measure. But it is now clear to us that our community ADM on the one hand is recognized by the UN as a community but that in the Netherlands it is invariably called ‘the squatters’ by both the press and the municipality because our community was born 21 years ago. But how the community was created does not matter.
Only after yesterday morning’s trial did the municipality start to realise that it may have been stupid and that this damage will actually be recovered from them. The eviction and destruction are both unlawful and we have therefore filed the additional requirement that the municipality should not only allow us to return to the ADM, based on the UN interim measure, but should also ensure that the damage is undone, or that there is comparable replacement housing.
While our residents today, under the threatening eyes of the ‘construction workers’ present on the site, are still trying to save some goods and pets, the world wonders how it is possible that the municipality of Amsterdam and the Dutch government completely ignore the 2 requested measures of the United Nations.
Both at the start of the eviction and today, our lawyer Mr. Tamas filed a ‘request for a measure of order’ to stop the eviction but both were refused by (the same) judge because ‘the residents would not be in danger of death’. In doing so, the judge ignored the UN interim measure.
Eventually the wreckage chamber had to meet and in the course of the week it becomes clear which judge will judge the question whether the Dutch state has to abide by the treaties it signed itself. That is, at the moment, the only question before us.
Eventually the wraking chamber had to meet and in the course of the week it becomes clear which judge will judge the question whether the Dutch state has to abide by the treaties it signed itself. That is, at the moment, the only question before us.
We, 130 residents, adults and children with their pets and the things we were able to save, are now roaming homeless through the city.
We are a close community and, despite everything, look forward to returning to our beloved ADM.
SIDE CIRCUS STATEMENT ON ADM
https://sidecirque.com
Salvo Cajoca Frasca 13 januari · I don’t remember what we are trying to resolve at the moment this picture was taken. We are at Adm, in action during the Jetlag festival.
The community is having a party. It is a peaceful, healthy community. Dozens of shows, thousands of relaxed and amused citizens are around us. On the pictures of the destruction of Adm I can see the panels we have painted for the festival.
When we came to Adm for the first time, we instantly had the feeling to be arriving home. The sensation that inside there everything would have been possible. Having conquered the confidence of the residents after the first edition, Jetlag grew bigger every year. The magically mild climate, the public, the surreal atmospheres that could exist only in this kind of place gave us energy to do and keep on doing for the next hundred years. For us, the Adm has been a place out of reality, where our fantasy could express itself with uncommon means and convictions. It was an enormous jump, in a few years we rode on the feeling of feasibility… of everything. It’s with a big responsibility that we honoured the immeasurable opportunity that a collective of artists can obtain for creating an event in such an extraordinary place.
It’s not that circus in itself wouldn’t be a totally heterotopic hymn to freedom. It is not about this, circus is itinerant, constantly escaping reality. Adm was there. A steady outpost of freedom, a warning for everyone that has accidentally believed, even only for a second, that another way of living one’s own life couldn’t exist. Now that reality has wanted, by all means, to lock up this dangerous slit, now that the kaleidoscope of realized hopes is destroyed, now that the “surreal” is removed, we want to thank those who have created, maintained, lived this rampart. It has been an honour, literally, having been given green light and artistic, technical and human support in one of the most powerful and competent communities that we have ever met in twenty years of itinerance.
We are now, more than ever, convinced that Adm is more than a lost place. The community of ideas, founded on the exaltation of the differences and on the talents of the individuals, will be able to survive in diaspora for years. History shows it. Adm, until some days ago, was a community. Now it is a folk. Not only those who lived inside Adm lost their homes – everybody that has passed there, that has received attention, space and possibilities of creation, lost their home. And everybody that would have arrived there in the next years.
That is when echoes of voices on the whole planet express their indignation and join the fight for the existence of free places. Free of the illogicality of money and banks, intentionally free of outdated moral conventions.
We would also like to say that those who now occupied Adm violently and those who permitted this value property rights even if the persons invoking the justice of law are affirmed criminals. Well, now that we know and neatly distinguish you (even without the ties that until now covered your necks), we insist: we despise you, we always despised you, we will always despise you. You are the exact model of human being that we believe responsible for the environmental and cultural poisoning of the world.
Tell it to yourself and to your children, lie and keep on lying to yourself and to everybody else, repeat yourself infinitely – then you will end up believing that it has been right to bury Adm for the common welfare of Amsterdam and for a better future: More industry, less culture, less freedom.
You hit a beehive with a stick. But the bees won’t disappear.
We will continue the look at the pictures, without them I could think that all this was a dream. But it is reality. It is Adm.
Thank you Admers, Side Circus is with you.
ADM
Amsterdam, the Netherlands
https://squ.at/r/5g4
https://adm.amsterdam/
Some squats in Amsterdam: https://radar.squat.net/en/groups/city/amsterdam/type/squat
Groups (social centres, collectives, squats) in Amsterdam: https://radar.squat.net/en/groups/city/amsterdam
Events in Amsterdam: https://radar.squat.net/en/events/city/Amsterdam
https://www.indymedia.nl/node/45169
https://adm.amsterdam/article/side-circus-statement-adm
