Hundreds of people late on Friday rioted in central Berlin to protest evictions from one of the few remaining squats, a symbol of the German capital’s free-spirited ideals.
Berlin mobilized hundreds of law enforcement officials to remove residents of the Liebig 34 site in Friedrichshain, a hip part of former East Berlin, where property prices have risen sharply.
It went off peacefully, but in the evening, hundreds of masked and black-clad protesters marched in driving rain from Mitte shopping district with a banner that read: “Defend free spaces, remain on the offensive.”
Photo: AFP
Shop windows and vehicles were set ablaze, police said, adding that officers were pelted with bottles.
Firecrackers were also set off in the central streets, with a thick cloud of smoke rising. A bus stop was destroyed.
Berlin police said they deployed 1,900 anti-riot officers to contain the violence.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, blocks of abandoned houses in the east of the capital were taken over by students, young people, artists and activists.
Some of the squats were subsequently legalized as housing projects.
The self-described “anarchist-queer-feminist” building on the corner of Liebigstrasse, with a facade covered with graffiti and banners, has been offering shelter to about 40 women and trans and intersex people since 1999.
A bar and a self-managed cultural center helped the collective to raise part of the money needed to pay the rent.
However, investor Gijora Padovicz, who owns the building, decided in 2018 not to renew the lease for Liebig 34.
Faced with the residents’ refusal to leave their homes, he filed a lawsuit, which he won, culminating in Friday’s eviction.
Police removed residents one by one from the four-story building, an emblem of Berlin’s fading “poor but sexy” image, the marketing slogan of former Berlin mayor Klaus Wowereit.
Protesting against the police action, Anna Mai, whistle in hand on the edge of the police cordon, said that Liebig 34 was “a symbol of the diversity of this city, which shouldn’t only belong to the rich. Berlin is dying.”
“It goes against human rights to throw people out on to the street in the middle of a pandemic, when they cannot pay their rent,” Liebig 34 collective lawyer Moritz Heusinger said. “They are becoming homeless.”
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