Ljubljana: Mačjak under eviction threat

By: fawda - July 31st, 2023  Filed under: Communique, News

Statement released on 31st of july by Mačjak, the squatted anarcha-queer space in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Eviction festival to take place on 15th of august 2023:

After little more than a year of constructing, organizing and maintaining the space known as Mačjak we are faced with an eviction notice coming into effect on the 1st of august.

Mačjak was always imagined as a temporary place for the anarcha-queer community here in Ljubljana to explore its means and desires. It was our chance to try squatting for the first time, after a 16-year void of political occupations in our city. Most of us who started the project were evicted in january 2021 from Autonomous Factory ROG (squatted in 2006) and moved into a shared space A-infoshop (built in 2003) in Metelkova (squatted in 1993). We needed to see what we can do by ourselves and what we really want for ourselves – what we first wanted was a small garage to host our our political art projects, but this initial space was in fact already occupied by homeless sleepers. So we took a part of a small building, it was trashed. One couldn’t even see the floor, let alone lay on them. we figured this was a nice place. There was no access to electricity, but we managed to open the water. The first summer we swept the walls off the floor and filled in the holes where electricity cables had been ripped out. We fixed the doors. It quickly became a place to spend time in, and we invited other groups to meet here. it soon became a place where we could work and party, where we could feel safe even though the place got attacked a few times. It became a place where we could build our community and nurture the anarcha resistance. [Read More]

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Ljubljana: statement from the Anarchist Initiative in support of the new autonomous center PLAC

By: fawda - September 11th, 2022  Filed under: Communique, News

It gives us great joy to welcome the establishment of a new autonomous space PLAC in Ljubljana that started today with the communal-political occupation of the empty, derelict, and publicly-owned building on Linhart Street!

We see this occupation as a protest against the existing social order and as a concrete answer to the daily worsening of social circumstances and problems such an order creates.
Occupation is a political act of emancipation and direct action that addresses important social issues, pertaining to all of us and our collective futures. The housing crisis, high rent, and lack of non-commercial spaces for creativity and action are but a few of these issues. Indirectly, it also addresses rampant corruption, social inequality, and the distribution of the Commonwealth. The newly occupied publicly-owned building, that is managed by the DUTB (‘bad bank’ organization) quite literally represents the money we all paid for the great bank bailout of 2012. Back then, the name of the game was a shameless transfer of wealth from the have-nots to the haves. With this occupation, we are returning a small part of that stolen money to the people for communal use. [Read More]

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Ljubljana: PLAC, new autonomous zone squatted

By: fawda - September 7th, 2022  Filed under: Communique, News

Last Saturday, a new autonomous zone was established in Ljubljana, called the Participatory Ljubljana Autonomous Zone (PLAC). The squat is located at 43 Linhartova Street, behind Bežigrad.

Around 13:00 on Saturday 3rd september, around 100 people entered the abandoned building of the former canteen of the Ljubljana Road Company at 43 Linhartova Street and declared the occupied building an autonomous zone. They wrote that they had created “a space for all those who have been sidelined by the socio-political order and deprived of the infrastructure for their cultural and political participation and the realization of their aspirations”. In the hours following the occupation of the empty building, the premises and the surrounding area were cleaned up. [Read More]

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Ljubljana: Everyone on the streets. Against the social destruction of the city!

By: fawda - January 21st, 2021  Filed under: Communique, News

Dear residents of Ljubljana, the whole municipality and all that come here to work, study or because of other obligationas and free-time activities! All are witnesses to the violent intervention of Municipality of Ljubljana (MOL) in the space of Autonomous Factory Rog (AT Rog).

Protest, Friday 22.1.2021 at 18h at Prešernov trg

What happened to the community of AT Rog can happen to many of us. Especially if they do not belong to the rich and property-owning well-off part of society. What happened in Ljubljana can happen in any other town. Violent expulsion of less well-off individuals, families and other communities is written in the fabric of capitalist system of extraction. The so called legal order and the so called rule of law have been exposed many times as instruments that were established mainly in the interest of financial and political elites. Moreover, the state and municipal authorities chose to exploit exactly the moment, when many hardly manage to make ends meet due to changed living conditions as we deal with the issue of basic mental, physical and economic survival. They base themselves in repressive measures, financial punishments and the police apparatus. Any and all political activity outside the parliamentarian arena is forbidden. Schools are closed, rent and other living costs are rising constantly, the workers’ rights are being taken away. They declared war on the people and it is important to understand this. [Read More]

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Ljubljana: Stop demolishing autonomous spaces, everyone come to ROG

By: fawda - January 20th, 2021  Filed under: Communique, News

Call for solidarity

Comrades! Many of you have stayed, fought and loved one of the two squats in Ljubljana. For 15 years Rog was a centre of political activity in the city and in the international movements. Today 19 January 2021, Rog factory was brutally evicted. Many of our comrades were violently beaten and arrested. We are calling for solidarity all around the world. Let’s show the oppressors of all kinds they are messing with the wrong movement!

Statement of Rog factory about eviction

Today, at 7 in the morning, employees of the security company Valina have forcefully entered the spaces of Autonomous factory Rog. Violently, using physical force, they injured some of its users and evicted everybody. Our personal belongings, pets and valuable equipment were left inside, together with 15 years of our dreams, activities, projects, adventures and common experiences. Police has erected fences around Rog and started to beat supporters gathering in support in front of the factory’s gate. In the inside of the complex workers have demolished majority of side structures and smashed windows on the main building that is protected as heritage. At the same time they are taking away, on the unknown location, all the equipment from Rog. More then 10 persons were held in custody, among them some of the injured that need medical help. We do not have access to them and we don’t have information on where all of them were taken. [Read More]

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Ljubljana: Autonomous factory Rog evicted

By: sisulscz - January 19th, 2021  Filed under: Communique

Ljubljana. Slovenia. January 19. 2021. In the early morning hours riot cops showed up at the autonomous factory Rog. They started to evict the squatted facilities without an announcement and without a legal basis.

In 2002 the Municipality of Ljubljana bought the 7,000 square-metres complex with several buildings in “downtown” Ljubljana but never used it. The former bicyle factory was occupied in 2006 and since then it was used as an autonomous social center.

This morning Valina secutity arrived at 07:00am and started to evict the Rog and injured several people during the eviction. The cops started to install fences around the Rog and started to beat people in front of the premises. At least nine people were arrested. Three injured people had to be treated in a hospital.
[Read More]

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Slovenia: statement by the Ljubljana Anarchist Initiative in support of autonomous spaces and Radio Študent

By: fawda - January 15th, 2021  Filed under: Communique, News

Three pillars of autonomous, alternative culture and politics in Ljubljana.

The anarchist movement in Ljubljana has been actively involved in the co-creation of the alternative scene for more than ten years. This includes the Autonomous Cultural Centre Metelkova, the Rog Autonomous Factory and Radio Študent. In a time of neoliberal devastation of the communal, the public and the non-commercial, these spaces represent the rare bright spots that make life in an otherwise increasingly gentrified Ljubljana more bearable, which is why many people have not yet moved out. [Read More]

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Ljubljana: Open call of The Autonomous Factory Rog

By: fawda - May 11th, 2019  Filed under: Communique, News

Against violence of the City Municipality of Ljubljana – for Open Dialogue

The users of the Autonomous Factory Rog are observing the statements and moves of the management of the City Municipality of Ljubljana with concern. By denying dialogue, refusing recognition of users’ activities, with financial sanctions and open threats of eviction, it suggests that the repetition of the 2016 conflict is expected.

Let us remember, at that time the Municipality attempted to vacate the factory premises and establish a construction site in the middle of the night with private security officers, but encountered a large number of users who wanted to protect those premises, in which they developed alternative culture, social and political organization, a sports program and other activities free of charge since 2006. Following up, these users appealed to their adverse possession rights and did not want to leave. The rights were later acknowledged by the district court in Ljubljana. From that moment on until the conclusion of the property rights lawsuit the construction work had to be discontinued. [Read More]

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Ljubljana: Call for October Revolution Festival in Autonomous Factory Rog

By: fawda - October 2nd, 2017  Filed under: Communique, News

Dear dead revolutionaries,

the dream has shattered and we are still being frustrated by the currents of history.
It has been one hundred years since the scandalous revolutionary powers of the past rose against their feudal overlords, now known as the October revolution. Countries have been torn apart by war and the lords were struck with raw and violent critiques of the working people. Vengeance was sweet and yet perhaps impotent, the war was loss for all we know.

Our frustrations could be thought of as a deep need for reinterpretation, an indignation, a struggle for social justice, a thirst for change. But in the last hundred years all we had was change. Our cities and our bodies, our discourses and work processes went through innumerable changes both wonderful and terrible – most of them irreversible. Revolution has revealed itself to be an ambiguous and yet fascinating concept.

The time has come to light up the furnaces of Rog once again and to take a stand for and with our dead revolutionary companions in the old factory turned autonomous art and social activist squat. Rog’s vast size, history and the nature of its fight against the municipality make it the perfect ground for a minimundus where we can meet and debate the current questions of the street, by the street. [Read More]

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Slovenia: Autonomous Spaces under Threat. For Communal Disobedience – Against Passivity

By: fawda - September 11th, 2017  Filed under: Communique, News

For the last year the autonomous spaces in the region were deeply marked by a tense athmosphere fueled by constant threats and some serious attacks. In the summer of 2016 the mayor of Ljubljana Zoran Janković ordered the attack of a private security company with neonazis in its ranks on the Autonomous Factory Rog. The community managed to successfully repel the initial attack only to be later confronted with an ongoing and attritive court procedures that threaten to leave individuals with heavy financial and other penalties. In the winter of 2016/17 a new squat Argo in Izola/Isola that had only started with activities was targeted by the machinery of »the bad bank« or BAMC. The latter hired a private security gang which soon after the turn of the year forcefully emptied the squat. Not far away in Koper/Capodistria Inde has been under intense siege since the winter, at first by the orders from BAMC and lately by some enthusiastic local entrepreneurs. Sadly it seems that the battle for Inde is over. Sokolski dom in Novo mesto has been for an entire year dealing with repeating calls from the local autorities to stop with activities and the court procedures are under way. [Read More]

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Slovenia: Koper needs UPInde

By: fawda - June 23rd, 2017  Filed under: Communique, News, video

20170607_Indeplatforma_KoperAfter the official handover on the 6th of June the new owner, Valter Krmac, wasted little time as his workers began the construction works which hinder the access to the spaces used by UPI.
Valter Krmac, the new part owner of the Inde complex is CEO of KMK Box and the head of the Oljka political party – the party of the Slovenian Istria. The same party states the following in its manifesto: »Oljka strives to transform politics up the point when us citizens and countrymen who have the willingness to actively shape our surroundings will no longer be neglected and limited by the politicians elected by our very own votes«. The same man now claims that UPInde »does not exist« and that it is »just a bunch of people who have claimed the right to run rampant in the abandoned buildings«.
What does UPInde do if not actively shape its surroundings? And what does Krmac do but neglect the citizens and countrymen with his ignorance and arrogance?
He bought the building knowing that it is used by people who work selflessly on different levels to benefit the local community thus making it INADMISSIBLE for him to act as if UPI does not exist! Let us not forget over 450 artistic, socially motivated, educational, musical and sports events in the span of two years. [Read More]

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Koper: Attention, dangerouly bad bank!

By: fawda - February 9th, 2017  Filed under: News

201702_Indeplatforma_KoperThis morning new notification boards appeared on the fence of the former factory Inde – this time stating: “Transition prohibited, private property” and “Danger of collapsing building”. Later on, the workers began placing a wire fence, first on the southwest side, and just a half an hour ago also at the entrance to the premises of U.P.I. We see this as an attempt to obstruct easement access to our premises, which we hold due to the landholding right.

Despite numerous attempts to establish communication with the bad bank (DUTB), this company clearly communicates with us only through suspension notices and notification boards. We again urge the DUTB to treat us as equal partners in negotiating. We expect that the easement path remain unobstructed.

We perceive the premises of U.P.I. as a public space, open to users and supporters of the community of The Creative Platform Inde. Therefore, we strongly reject such an approach of the so called »owner«.

We understand that the area where the cleaning of dangerous waste takes place must be protected, but we will not let this become an excuse to prevent access to the premises of U.P.I. and consequently enable the eviction of U.P.I. We do not in any way hinder the cleaning of asbestos, even more – we are being fully cooperative from the beginning. We demand an equally correct treatment. [Read More]

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