hi all,
herkulesstraße is the address of one of the biggest refugee dorms in köln/cologne, germany (around 700 people living there, many in containers), where about a month ago a huge police raid took place (600 pigs). they came at 4am, commanded people out of their rooms, frightened children to horror, stirred up everything they could find in order to “find illegally settled persons” and “drug dealers”, as in the control wave a few months ago (“filtering mobile burglar groups”, mainly focused on eastern europeans. especially the rroma) some of the controlled gave the address as their home base. in the end they found “reasons” to arrest less than five people but destroyed the night of all, (re)traumatized many including children and put all hopes in a safe arrival in this country in a more than doubtful light.
i have attended an official fest set up in the courtyard just two days after the raid, for the sake of hearing what the district mayor (who usually speaks at antifascist memorial events and once even at a sympathy demo for the turkish uprising in 2013) and the “sozialdezernentin” of köln city (who bounced off all progressive negotiations on solutions to the situation of bulgarian and romanian migrant workers this year) would say. only the former spoke (the latter one came too late) and criticised the high number of police but not the fact that they harassed and terrorized people. three words remained in my mind, used frequently in this constellation by the animator towards the youth of the house, to put an end to designed hollow show episodes and sometimes fun they were allowed to have for a short time: “danke! bitte! sitzen!”
if it was not making me so angry, i would say it’s a great critical joke about the culture ruling this fucking country.
now those of you speaking german can “enjoy” the report on the pigs’ raid from their own perspective.
love&rage
ghb
ps.
ein Link, für die, die es interessiert, der Bericht zur Razzia in der
Herkulesstraße aus Polizeisicht wie im Landtag vorgestellt.
http://www.landtag.nrw.de/portal/WWW/dokumentenarchiv/Dokument/MMV16-2419.pdf