Lyon: Break-ins and ID checks… the disgusting methods of Grand Lyon Habitat

One morning at 7am, Grand Lyon Habitat broke down doors in a squat to register its inhabitants. Unacceptable practices of intimidation. Since a few months, Collomb is no longer mayor of Lyon. He has been thrown out by the green party allied with the “left”, represented by Grégory Doucet at the city hall and Bruno Bernard at the Metropolis. The latter had said that he would soon assert his positions on the subject of housing, when he was questioned on the night of his election by the “Trêve Générale” (general truce) movement.

On Monday, August 17, at 7 a.m., bailiffs came to break down the front door of the squat Le Maria, waking up the inhabitants by forcing their way into each room of the building, breaking the locks of the absent persons and searching through their belongings to find their identities. When we asked them what right they had to do this, the officials answered that they had a warrant, but they never wanted to show it to us, even later when we asked the bailiff for it by e-mail. The bailiffs were not willing to do anything other than put holes in the locks despite our proposals to give them names, either immediately or later by e-mail. Inhabitants and friends therefore had to react by protesting collectively, which eventually pushed them to leave. [Read More]

Caen: as long as there are people on the street, we’ll squat!

Demonstration Saturday, September 5, 2 pm.

Since last June 24th, the Calvados prefecture has evicted nine squats in the Caen agglomeration in which about 360 people lived, the majority of which were families with children. The squats on rue Bayet in Mondeville and rue La Varende in Hérouville-Saint-Clair were evicted during the extended winter truce on July 10 with a state of health emergency. Seven other squats have since been evicted: allée du Bosphore in Caen, route de Caen à Ifs, rue Pasteur in Mondeville, rue Desmoueux, Boulevard Guillou, rue Damozanne and rue de la Grace de dieu in Caen.

The Prefecture’s intention is to place a maximum number of people in CRA (Administrative Detention Center) or to assign them to residence, thus putting them under the permanent threat of expulsion from French territory. The policy of repression put in place by the state is intensifying, two Georgians were recently expelled following a squat eviction.

Currently, around 200 people do not have a permanent accommodation solution, some of them benefit from temporary solidarity, others live in tents or in their cars in undignified conditions. [Read More]

Angers: a look back at the demonstration in support of the Grande Ourse and the court case

On Tuesday 1st September, the Grande Ourse squat and its inhabitants were summoned to the judicial court by the owner, who demanded their immediate eviction. The collective having called for a rally at 1pm in front of the building and a support march, the afternoon was busy and lively. A quick look back at the mobilisation and the hearing itself.

About a hundred people finally gathered in front of the Grande Ourse. Time for a coffee and the departure was launched by the batukada. All dressed in pink, the percussionists cheerfully lead the march. As soon as the bridge is crossed, the cops lead the small procession. Three vans and a car just for us, the prefecture has spoiled us! The cops, recognising some people, allow themselves unnecessary words and some stupid remarks about their looks. They definitely don’t change… The demonstration then goes through the town centre animated by songs, hastily prepared that very morning (and it shows), drums or slogans about the right to housing. In spite of our small number, we make noise and the passers-by look at us with curiosity. The numerous banners then attract their attention. One can read: “less bourgeois, more roofs; “fuck the mayor and his evictions” or “it’s not the winter truce we want, it’s the truce itself”. [Read More]

Paris: families living on the streets sleep in front of the Prefecture

After a month of alerts to the services of the Paris City Hall and the Ile-de-France Prefecture remained unanswered, 107 exiled families living on the streets settled on Monday August 31 on the forecourt of the City Hall to put an end to this unworthy situation. The objective: to obtain permanent accommodation for all of them.

Since 2015, the public authorities have shown their inability to provide a dignified welcome for exiled people arriving in Paris, in defiance of their legal obligations. Among these people are many families and single women whose time spent on the streets is constantly increasing before they are offered care.

Every evening since 2017, the association Utopia 56 has been trying as best it can to make up for these state and municipal shortcomings via a network of solidarity-based shelters. This network is made up of about 250 people living in the Ile-de-France region who take in single women, families and couples living on the streets. [Read More]

Paris: about 300 people live under the A1 highway bridge

“Every morning, the police tell us to get out”.

Barely a month after the expulsion from the Aubervilliers camp, about 300 people live in a camp set up in Saint-Denis, under the A1 highway bridge. Far from food and clothing distributions, they also suffer from police harassment.

There is anger this Friday morning in the voices and faces of the men who have been living in the camp that has been set up for a little less than a month in Saint-Denis, under the A1 highway bridge.

As every morning, the police came by at about 6 a.m. and ordered the people installed on the esplanade that stretches out in front of the tricolor letters “UEFA Euro 2016” to “get out”.

Only the tents installed on the dirt slope between the road and the esplanade are allowed to stay. The camp is contained in the most invisible and most dangerous part of this place in any point uninhabitable. [Read More]

Athens: 10, 100, thousands of squats. One year of resistance against state terrorism

Today marks one year since the armed hooded men of Chrysochoidis invaded the refugee squat of Spirou Trikoupi 17 and the neighboring Transito squat. It was early in the morning when they forcibly pulled out families with young children from their beds–people who after much hardship and suffering had found a place to grow roots again in these buildings. They took them from their home and distributed them in miserable camps to live in the dirt and with indifference in canvas tents. Since then, a barrage of state terrorist attacks on refugee and political squats has led to evictions, snatching of people, beatings, and arrests. The refugee squats have functioned for many years as unprecedented experiments of practical anti-racism and anti-fascism, self-organization, and solidarity. These spaces have given thousands of people the opportunity to regain their stolen autonomy and the right to define their own lives away from human guards and charity contractors. And almost all of them were evicted. Families with babies, single women, LGBTQI+ people, the sick and disabled, survivors of torture were all brutally detached from their daily lives and relationships and were trapped in nothing but state mercilessness. Political squats that formed cells of social action in neighborhoods, challenging the prevailing ideas of tourism, private property, and commercialization, which turned cities into concrete class pyramids of solitary depravity and social rivalry, were also evicted. [Read More]

Gap: Cesaï violently and illegally evicted

On Wednesday 19 August, at six o’clock, police officers broke down the doors of the rooms of the inhabitants of Césaï, the Gap autonomous social centre, with a battering ram. They gather everyone in a courtyard and check their identities. This is the beginning of the eviction from Cesaï.

Results: 43 people outside, 20 staying in campsites, 2 boarded at the station. 43 exiled and homeless people who barely had time to take their belongings and collect food before Cesaï was walled up. 43 people on the Place Saint Arnoux, in front of the Prefecture, soon joined by militants.

A camp is being organized while waiting for a solution that will not come from the Prefecture, which is increasingly afraid of the famous “vacuum effect”. While waiting for a place to sleep and to put down their bags, families, young migrants, Dublin cases and homeless young people are all astonished to find themselves homeless in a few hours. [Read More]

Calais: associations refer cases to the Human Rights Defender and UN rapporteurs on the situation of migrants

Today took place in Calais the 693rd eviction from an informal living space since 1 January 2020. As of 13 August 2020, the fundamental rights of the exiled people surviving in Calais are still not respected (Human Rights Observers).

Thirteen associations working with migrants in Calais announced on Friday that they had contacted the Human Rights Defender, as well as seven United Nations special rapporteurs on human rights, to “alert them to the inhuman living conditions” of refugees.

In Calais, the evictions of camps are continuing and police repression of migrants has increased since the arrival of Gérald Darmanin at the Ministry of the Interior, according to human rights groups present in the area.

In an attempt to make their voices heard, thirteen of them – including the Auberge des Migrants, Médecins du Monde and Secours Catholique – seized on Friday 14 August the Human Rights Defender Claire Hédon, whose mandate has just begun, as well as seven United Nations special rapporteurs on human rights. [Read More]

Saint-Denis: Two weeks after the eviction from Aubervilliers camp, hundreds of migrants return home

Between 300 and 400 migrants live under the bridge of the A1 motorway in Saint-Denis in totally undignified conditions, only fifteen days after the eviction from the Aubervilliers camp. The associations denounce an absurd situation where evictions and resettlements follow one another without any lasting solution.

At the time of the eviction from the Aubervilliers camp on 29 July, Pierre Henry, the director general of France Terre d’Asile, had said to himself “See you in September”, certain that the camp would be re-formed in a few weeks.

We didn’t have to wait that long. Less than a fortnight after the eviction of the 1,500 or so people living in the camp, “between 300 and 400” people found refuge under the A1 motorway bridge at Saint-Denis. They are single men, mostly from Afghanistan.

Among them, some “missed the eviction of Aubervilliers, others had an administrative appointment that day and could not be present”, says Maël, a member of the association Utopia 56 who did not want his surname to be made public. Among these hundreds of exiles, there are also newcomers who only found this unhealthy place to settle. [Read More]

Athens: Solidarity action for Dervenion 56. An international call for solidarity

On friday 26 june, in Exarchia, the Greek state evicted and sealed Dervenion 56 and the building at Dervenion 52. An immediate gathering of solidarity was held on Exarcheia square for several hours. In the evening of the same day, a solidarity march was held with the participation of 300 people. The march ended at the Dervenion squat, barricades were set up around the perimeter and then comrades broke the concrete blocks of shame. Police never came and after some hours the protesters left. Riot cops made again an operation the next morning, building again a concrete wall in front of the squat’s door. According to information, in the following days, various solidarity actions followed, a demonstration took place on the main shopping street of Athens, Ermou, where slogans were shouted, and apparently some people attacked multinational clothing companies in Ermou in the occupied -by the police-, center of Athens. Even the rich yuppie nephew of the Prime Minister, the mayor of Athens, Costas Bakogiannis, could not escape the anger caused by the evictions. The pioneer of violent gentrification and his bodyguards were attacked with coffees and other items by dozens of people at a local religious festival. In the following days a march was held again at Exarcheia where comrades demolished the walls of the sealed migrants’ squats at Themistokleous 58 and Spirou Trikoupi 15. All these days, texts of solidarity were written and banners were put in various locations in Greece. [Read More]

Caen: eviction of the squat of the former Guy Liar College in Mondeville

On Wednesday 24th June, from 6am, the Calvados prefecture evicted a squat in Mondeville, the former Guy Liard college on rue Albert Bayet at the request of the owner, the departmental council and with the agreement of the town hall of Mondeville. Four families were housed in four former staff housing units, two other families and single people had been living in a former administrative building since January 4th. A total of about 40 people, including about 15 children, were evicted this morning. The Prefecture communicated as early as 6.15 am on social networks, proposing a solution of one week’s re-housing in a hotel after studying the individual situations, and it “will invite foreign nationals in an irregular situation to leave the national territory”! This means that families will either be placed under house arrest at the hotel (daily judicial control at the police station, obligation to be present at the hotel from 6pm to 9pm…), or deported to the CRA (Administrative Detention Centre) in Oissel near Rouen (the one in Rennes is closed and will reopen on 30 June) awaiting a hypothetical deportation.

As part of the state of health emergency, the winter truce has been extended until July 10th. This measure applies to all the squats under the jurisdiction of the Tribunal d’Instance (ten out of twelve squats currently). This squat was evictable since February 21st by decision of the Administrative Court, therefore it could not benefit from the winter truce from a legal point of view. Nevertheless, given the current circumstances, it is perfectly scandalous to throw dozens of people out on the street after a week of rehousing in a hotel or to consider their eviction in some cases. [Read More]

Zürich: Juch resists! New occupations

This evening June 20th, Grimselstrasse 18 and 20, Saumackerstrasse 67 and 69 have been squatted. The squatters* took these spaces in response to the Juch eviction on 23rd May.

If you evict one space, we* will open a new one!

Exactly one month ago today, the Social Department of the City of Zurich filed a criminal complaint and subsequently had the Juch area evicted by a large contingent of the Zurich City Police. This is only because the neighboring stadium construction site of HRS Real Estate seems to need more space to turn its trucks around and thus expand its empire as quickly and profitably as possible on behalf of the city. Marco Cortesi (spokesperson for the Zurich city police) also stressed in an interview in front of the freshly evicted area that the main thing now was to immediately make the area uninhabitable and then guard it with private security forces. Even the left-wing parties of the city of Zurich complain that it is extremely questionable and inappropriate to destroy residential and cultural spaces for a building site installation, and wrote in a jointly published media release: “For us it is clear: the demolition of buildings for the use of an area as parking space is unacceptable. Although no meaningful use was promised and a shady deal between the city of Zurich and HRS was settled without any transparency, the squatters* had to leave the Juch area. It cannot be said often enough: This is outrageous from the city of Zurich! We are furious! [Read More]