The following statement is from one of the individuals who was arrested during the most recent anti-squatting wave of evictions in Amsterdam and refused to give their name to the policial-judicial system, resulting in them spending longer in captivity than those who identified themselves. The new squatting ban in the Netherlands is attempting through repression to wipe out the entire basis of solidarity between squatters.
from 5th of July Solidarity:
Excerpt from nn1416 statement to court
We’re neither illegal, nor legal. We are people, and we experience every minute of our stolen freedom as ten long years; and don’t be deceived: the fact that we can watch CNN and Comedy Central, and are allowed to breathe the outside air twice a day, doesn’t make it any nicer.
Please don’t try and tell me that if the border between two countries lies in a forest, and that if you wander ten meters in the wrong direction, you are suddenly what’s known as an “illegal” person and therefore deserve confinement, humiliation, and violence. Unless anyone seriously still cherishes such medieval fantasies, it’s quite clear: no one is illegal. What we are, is unwanted.
We are condemned, like everyone else, to stand, sit, or lie somewhere on the surface of the Earth. We can’t really help that, unfortunately. If you’re driven away everywhere you go, what then?
I’m quite certain that the only thing we can really count on in the coming 50 years is misery on this planet. But the only thing which can never truly be taken away from us is solidarity; not only with people who suffer, but with those who refuse to make them suffer, and pay a sharp price for it; with those who stand up for the violated rights of us all; with the unimaginable terror that a missing bicycle light could lead to imprisonment and deportation to a place from whence you once had a very good reason to flee.
The fact that you’ve been beaten by the police doesn’t make you a violent person; the fact that you are sitting before a judge doesn’t make you guilty; the fact that you refuse to cooperate with an inhumane policy doesn’t make you illegal. Unwanted, maybe.
But since the cause of human misery is so often other humans, we — human beings — are the only ones who can do something to change that.
