Fines and expenses
You may have already heard that a judge decreased the executor’s fee to “mere” 900 000 CZK (yes, nine hundred thousand, approx 36 000 EUR), which, thanks to your overwhelming solidarity, appears to have been mostly collected. However, this unfortunately is not the end to the repression and related expenses. We still need money to pay our lawyers because we are appealing the “executor’s fee” to the Constitutional Court.
At the same time we are being sued by the state and the State Railway Administration Company for allegedly using the squatted derelict building for profit and for denying the owners its profitable use. They are currently suing us in total for 938 000 CZK but the amount could in the end rise to 3 500 000 CZK. These lawsuits are, of course, absurd and we have already won at a lower court but we cannot be sure of the final result. We are also sorting out fines and legal expenses for people who defended Klinika on the roof. In short, money is still needed. If any money is left at the end of all these proceedings or if some of the already payed sums are returned we will put them back into future autonomous spaces. We are humbled by your incredible solidarity and see it as a signal that your are in it with us. [Read More]
Prague: Latest updates about fines, Klinika building and how we can all fight for the city
Prague: Call for support from Klinika
In January 2019 Prague’s only political squat Klinika was evicted by a private executor (debt-collector) and a private security service. For four years this autonomous social centre had been a place for meetings of emancipatory social movements, neighbours and independent culture.
Klinika was one of the first centres of refugee help in the Czech Republic, and after this it was attacked by neo-Nazis and became a target of permanent pressure from Czech right-wing politicians.
The executor has claimed 1,600,000 CZK (62,000 Euros) as the costs for the eviction. He blocked the personal bank account of one member of Klinika’s collective who had signed the contract that legalised Klinika for one year in 2015. As a consequence, her wages go straight to the executor (debt collector) and she cannot use her bank account. We understand this as an attempt to exact the exemplary punishment of political activists. All this is happening in the context of the Czech Republic being discussed as an executors’ mafia state – which has brought almost 10% of the population into insurmountable, precarious life situations. [Read More]
Prague: Notes from the eviction of Klinika
The eviction of the autonomous centre Klinika in Prague was announced to happen on Thursday, 10 January. Yet, on Friday, 11 January, it was still not over and Klinika was still breathing. There were still several people occupying a platform on the roof. We talked to an activist at Klinika.
The context:
The strategy used by the authorities in the eviction of Klinika differs from previous evictions in Prague. Usually, it is the cops who carry out the eviction. This time, a bailiff (“exekutor”) is in charge of the procedure, and a private security company that seems to recruit its personnel from the ranks of hooligans/fascists enforces it.
[Read More]
Prague: We must defend Klinika, to be evicted on January 10th!
Callout to those who are not indifferent to the fate of this space.
Despite the promising ongoing negotiations about the future of Klinika with SŽDC (the railway administration), the police has decided to evict. In the fall, when the new SŽDC management started to open negotiations, we welcomed this initiative and we came together in a specific way to preserve the social center and to resolve the future of the house to a mutual satisfaction. Nevertheless, the State decided to use violence to kick us out. Evicting Klinika does not make sense because of the ongoing negotiations, SŽDC doesn’t not even want to demolish the building. The eviction would just lead to another empty and decaying house.
We don’t exclude the possibility of further negotiations, but we don’t want to put up with the fact that the state is trying to resolve the situation with violence and a demonstration of force. Indeed, the court’s decision does not force SŽDC to perform an eviction. This decision is a political one, apparently taken under police pressure. The eviction will take place on January 10th 2019. Therefore, early morning that day, we are calling for a solidarity breakfast, a protest gathering at Klinika. We’ll defend Klinika from an eviction as many times before. Show your solidarity to Klinika. [Read More]
Prague: Klinika under threat of eviction
On Tuesday 5th September 2017 the Prague municipal court by its decision opened the way for the eviction of Klinika. Our appeal was rejected as the court upheld the view of the state (owner of the house) that they were within their rights not to extend the contract with us. The collective is convinced that the autonomous social centre can remain functioning regardless of the decision. It is senseless to destroy a functional social centre visited by thousands of people for an uncertain and highly uneconomical reconstruction of the building into offices, whose approval alone will take a few years due to the need to change the zoning regulations which do not allow offices at the site.
Klinika started in November 2014 by occupying a former lung clinic, which had stood empty since 2009. It was evicted by the police after only 10 days but after months of negotiations the state agreed to a contract with the social centre for a year with the expectation that the contract would be extended. [Read More]
Prague: Don’t ruin Klinika, don’t ruin our city!
If nothing changes, Klinika will likely get evicted in summer. We can turn the tide – come on 9th of April on demonstration for Klinika!
Klinika still vibrates from such relations, meetings and events that find themselves trampled upon and exiled out of sight in the rest of the city. An abandoned, decaying home, collectively rebuild, open for sharing of our experiences and knowledge, alternative culture and the organization of radical politics, both of which don’t back away before the brownish authoritarian swoosh around us.
However, we don’t want to advertise here, neither amaze with some overview of our events or convince you of our own diligence. Instead, we want to convey the experiences we have gained over the last two years. Prague needs its Klinika and the people, determined to fill it with life – here we have them plenty.
On every road there were many obstacles and many slips, never was it easy for the self-organized social center to exist. If it comes to its end though, it won’t be so much due to the naivete or impossibility of our goals, rather due to the diligence of people, whose deep-seated beliefs went unmoved by Klinika. The state institutions – Office for Representation of Government in Property Affairs (UZSVM) and the Railway Transport Administration (SŽDC), our current owner – finally came up together with a plan how to bury the social center. [Read More]
Prague: Repressions against social center Klinika
For the second time in less than a week the Czech police has invaded the autonomous social centre Klinika in Prague under the pretext of looking for explosive devices after receiving an anonymous email claiming to have planted bombs in the building.
After the first invasion on Friday 20, few activists managed to stay on the roof of the building while the police evicted everybody and handed the building to the representative of the state, the owner of the building. However, later in the evening Klinika was successfully occupied again.
Today’s invasion under the same pretext of looking for a bomb has led to arrests, activists on the roof and again, to an eviction from the building, occupied in late 2014. Paradoxically, today was the day when activists gathered in front of the office responsible for managing state property to pay the fine of approx. 40 € per day for each day of occupation after the one year contract expired early this year, amounting to a total of 40000 Czech crowns (over 1500 €).
In February Klinika was the target of a neonazi attack motivated mainly by the significant role Klinika has played in collecting and delivering aid to refugees on the Balkan route (mainly in Hungary and Serbia) as well as helping collectives assisting refugees in transit through the Czech Republic. [Read More]
Prague: You can’t evict ideas
The Autonomous Social Centre Klinika, which occupies the building of a former clinic in Prague, has attracted a large number of supporters and was awarded a prestigious prize. Yet its future remains uncertain.
Since 1987, the Charter 77 Foundation has annually awarded the František Kriegl Prize in the Czech Republic. The award is a reminder of the brave attitude of the Czechoslovak politician František Kriegl, who refused, as the only member of the political elite at the time, to sign the “Moscow Protocol” after the country was invaded by the armies of the Warsaw Pact in 1968 and so legitimate the occupation of Czechoslovakia by Soviet tanks. The current mission of the prize is to highlight exemplary courage expressed by individuals or civic institutions in the quest for upholding human and civil rights, and political tolerance. Its results are announced each year on 10 April, the day of František Kriegl’s birth. This year, the prize was awarded to the collective of the Autonomous Social Centre Klinika, located in Prague’s Žižkov district. Its activists now stand alongside figures such as the Czech dissident Jaroslav Šabata, leading Roma scholar Milena Hübschmannová, or anarchist Jakub Polák, who all held the award previously. It is undoubtedly one of the most telling proofs of the social necessity and importance of the Autonomous Social Centre. “Klinika lives, the struggle continues”, runs the slogan of the movement that arose around Klinika in the past year. But despite the award and the strong imprint that Klinika has left, the centre’s future, symbolically and physically connected with the building of a former healthcare facility in Prague’s Žižkov, is still not certain. [Read More]
Prague: The Autonomous Social Centre Klinika needs your support!
Call for international solidarity
The Klinika Autonomous Social Centre celebrated its first anniversary,running a space on legal loan in Žižkov, Prague. Activists occupied the house, which laid derelict and full of rubbish for five years, at the end of November 2014, and after police interventions and negotiations on the contract with the Bureau for Representation of the State in Issues of Property, the Centre, called Klinika, began its varied program in March 2015.
Prague: Statement of Klinika collective about attack on the autonomous social centre
Neonazis attacked Klinika. One person was hurt, others were in danger. Activists assume there’s a link between islamophobic demonstrations that were held today and visited by thousands of people. Klinika collective is not afraid and is going to continue its activities. Klinika also calls on people attending such demonstrations to realize whom they are supporting by doing that.
Prague: Klinika, struggle for autonomous space
Czech republic is a country of „political stability“. In despite of general disillusionment in capitalism no social movements haven’t emerged yet. Whereas in other countries social protests and demonstrations underway at least, in the Czech republic demonstrations against neoliberal austerity can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Moreover even the radical left, anarchist and anti-authoritarian activities were in decline after anti-IMF and anti-NATO summit protests at the beginning of 2000’s and squatting practically disappeared.
The situation began to change slowly after the eviction the last squat in Prague in 2009. In the next years the squatting has become important repertoire of action of the small radical and autonomous milieu in Prague. In despite of police repression and quick evictions of the squats, activists used the squatting as a tool in struggle against real estate speculations, and as a symbolic challenge the dogma of private property as one of the cornerstone of capitalist ideology in the Czech republic. After 2012 only one squat (Cibulka) remained, but squatters brought attention to the issues of speculations. Besides this symbolic struggle there was long-term effort in autonomous milieu to open squatted social center as autonomous space for radical and anti-capitalists politics. [Read More]
Prague: Klinika, anticommercial cultural and social center
Prague is just like any other big European city in desperate need of a noncommercial community centre, of a space for cultural events (such as concerts, exhibitions, etc.), educational lectures and workshops, community gardening, cooking, library, and, above all, meeting people from the neighbourhood (or anyone interested) and also a place to support marginalized groups of people (especially people without homes) who are living in stop-gap conditions on the fringes of society.
The building of former lung clinic (that’s why the name “Klinika“) in Žižkov district, which was abandoned, unused and left to decay, was taken over by a group of squatters and activists on 29th of November 2014 in order to create “Autonomous cultural and social centre Klinika“. All the trash including used needles was cleaned out and the first neighbourhood event was organized. But after just 10 days, on 9th of December, the building was violently vacated by police forces. On the 13th of December big demonstration took place (about 1000 people) but after its end police corpses forced everyone to leave the place, several people were injured and had to be taken to the hospital. Since then, we were stuck in endless cycle of meetings with city and state offices and basically forced to wait. [Read More]
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