September 13th, 2011
Once upon a time, there was a group of people who were declared criminals overnight and who then took to the streets and said: Your laws, not ours. And they set fires in order to show that they will not go away silently, they will not surrender… Come to Amsterdam on 1st of October to show that the fires of last year are still smoldering – and they might flare up any moment!
September 10th, 2011
Valreep is a new squat in Amsterdam East. People there have been working very hard to clean up all the mess inside and make it into a social centre. The District Council (Local Government) was not amused, and came very often to do “inspections”. The Valreep people announced their official opening happening, and then the day before the opening the District Council came with the announcement to forbid the happening, otherwise a fine of 25 000 (!) euros would have to be paid.
A timeline of events and actions in the Netherlands during the squatting ban
October 1st, 2010
The first day of the squatting ban.
Head of the police and a public prosecutor known for his hatred towards squatters are placed under 24-hour surveillance and protection after threatening texts (for example “an accident is just around the corner”) are supposedly painted outside their houses the previous night.
In Amsterdam 1000 people take part in a demonstration against the squatting ban. During the demonstration a house is squatted, and slightly later a riot breaks out when the cops charge the crowd. The police uses tear gas for the first time in years. 2 cops, 3 cop horses and several squatters are injured. One squatter is beaten severely and ends up in hospital with a fractured skull. 11 people get arrested.
Photos.
A group of people squatted a building, and started to paint, and hang out flags and banners.
Lots of nice photos : http://indymedia.nl/nl/2010/10/70743.shtml
The banner says : “With hollow laws you cannot fill empty houses”.
[squat!net]
Fast translation from a communiqué written in french:
https://squat.net/fr/news/pays-bas031109.html
Banner and fire, in solidarity with the squats
During the night of november 1st to november 2nd, party of the dead, we did awake !
We’ve put a banner on the wall of an ex-squat, on Phalanstère street, in Grenoble city-center. This building is empty for years, its owner is Actis, who is “managing” business with “social housing” and so on (owning a lot of empty spaces). This building has been squatted in 2005-2006 (Parad is Yack) and in 2007 (La Poulie / Parad is Back).
Everytime, it has been evicted by the Justice & Police crew… The second floor has been burnt a few weeks after the last eviction, to impeach the squatters to come back. The building is still empty.
[Read More]
Last Thursday [oct. 15th 2009] the Dutch parliament has passed a new law making squatting a felony. Only the senate still has to vote on it’s passing now.
However, with a rightwing majority, odds are effectively january 1st all squats in the Netherlands will be up for eviction. This will mark the end of an era, a carte blanche for the destruction of our social centers and infrastructure. Not to mention the criminalisation of thousands of people suffering from the housing shortage, for whom squatting has always been a legal means of acquiring a roof over their heads.
An occupation of parliament square during the voting ended with riot cops charging into the tent camp and arresting about one hundred people. Photo’s can be seen on http://www.indymedia.nl/nl/2009/10/62251.shtml (during the day) and http://www.indymedia.nl/nl/2009/10/62308.shtml(the eviction).
15.10.2009 – 22:47
A blend of right wingers and christian democrats have managed to push through a ban on squatting, instead of a ban on emptiness. How fucked up is that?
Squatting has been banned in the Netherlands. Fuck know what this means in practise for the thousands of established squats.
The vote passed today in the Tweede Kamer (House of Commons) and will no doubt be ratified by the Eerste Kamer (House of Lords equivalent).
80-100 squatters have been arrested already in Den Haag outside the Parliament.
It could get a lot more heavy.
New Anti Squatting Law of the agenda
Last week came the answer, from the State Secretary for economic matter, on motion “Ten Hoopen” to prohibit squatting company spaces. According to Van Gennip modification of the legislation is not possible, not necessary and also not desirable. The Anti-squatting law -Kraakverbod- seems with that of the table.
No Kraakverbod for non-residential spaces
Autumn 2003: Jan Ten Hoopen, Christian democrat, proposed anti squatting legislation. A Committee was formed to protest against the plans, a lobby-group was set up and a press offensive started. About 50 squatted non-residential spaces held an open day to show what we would be missing if there was to be an anti-squating law. Many non-squatters were informed and supported the campaign. The squatters managed to display the broader function of squatting in Dutch society, a function beyound that of provideing living spaces for the squatters them selves. The Dutch squatters movement also pointed to the millions of square meters of empty office space available in the Netherlands at this moment.
Unfortunately we have very very bad news…. the city council decided to force UPC (the owner) to get us out. They do this because they believe we are involved with criminal activities and other reasons like the wagens. Also they claim that this building was build for a company and therefore not suitable to live in…
UPC has to get rid of us before the 1st of december otherwise they will get fined for 15 000 euro’s. We are stunned with this decision because UPC told the council that they didn`t have so much problems with us being there. Nevertheless the council has decided. We choose to fight them in any legal way.
Therefor we are organising an evening with our laywer to gather as much objections possible to keep vlampijpstraat squated. This means we are inviting everyone that has any involvement with our squat ( neightbours, skaters, artists etc… ) We hope we can gather as much as possible support. We believe that we give Utrecht so much on a cultural level and that we are so important for many people but now they threaten to close us down.
In 18 cities and villages Dutch squatters had an ‘open day’ in more than 50 squats to show their neighbours, media and other interested people what squatting is and how squatters live.
The open day is a reaction to the proposal to make squatting of commercial buildings illegal (see-> http://squat.net/en/news/dutchlaw181003.html). Since this proposal squatters and squat actions draw a lot of attention. Squatters in the netherlands continue their daily squat actions.
[Read More]
Next tuesday the Dutch parliament will vote on a proposal to make squatting in the Netherlands more difficult. The proposal was made by Christian Democrat Ten Hoopen and is aimed against ‘criminal organisations who squat buildings to have parties’. Ten Hoopen proposed this to the parliament with a right wing majority after ten years of silence on the subject of squatting on national political level.
According to Ten Hoopen the squatters profit from free electricity and they make life more difficult for real estate owners. In an interview he said he wanted all squatting to be illegal. The next few days he got loads of counter arguments in the main stream media and it became clear he didn’t know what he was talking about. Even his colleage from the Christian Democrat party ‘CDA’ responsible for housing issues said he didn’t want to talk about making squatting in general illegal and preferred making plans against the housing shortage.
In 1980 the old tax-building in The Hague was squatted. The name ‘BLAUWE AANSLAG’was chosen because of the blue papers everybody gets every year+to pay their tax. After the council became owner it was decided to renovate the building (with money from the governement). The people of the Blauwe Aanslag made an agreement with the council that the Blauwe Aanslag became owner and that the building would be renovated in three stages.
After the first stage in 1993 the council decided to stop the renovation because all of a sudden they had other plans. They want to build a big road in the middle of the centre and the Blauwe Aanslag is standing in the way. In January 1995 the council decided to demolish and evict the Blauwe Aanslag the legal proccedures had begun. By now 8 years and lots of court cases as well have past and as it turns out that the arguments of the council are based on wrong information and false traffic counts they still want to evict. The last 23 years (almost) the Blauwe Aanslag has grown in to a multi-cultural centre with: bookshop, A vegan restaurant, Squatbar, a club, printers, cinema, cater service, metal workshop, wood workshop, voko and more. And a nice place for a lot of people to live in. Now they want to evict and demolish all that has been built up through the years. BASTARDS!!
