Refugee Protest – Lager in Bornitzstr. 102 Berlin
from abriraqui
In the post from yesterday I was saying that maybe today (07.10.2016) in the morning they police would come and proceed with the eviction.
It didn’t happen, but it does not mean anything. Early morning the employers from PeWoBe knocked at the door of people’s room asking them to move, to go out of their rooms, they said “No, we are not moving”. After some time, the day movement started and people went outside, into the garden or to the front door, they were not going any where. They will stay.
Today no visits are allowed inside the Lager, no friends, no press, nobody can go inside. So I stayed outside and met my friend from the day before, and then continued chatting with people that was around. There is an inmense need to talk, to be heard, to express how the feel about how they are treated, all of them agreed, “they treat us like animals“. The strategy of threating people, just causes one effect, they get angry and get empowered to resist, to talk loud.
One guy came to me and said, “I know you”, I answered “mmm maybe”, he started talking, they’ve seen enough shit in their lives already (this was a young guy, early twenties), 8 cousins of him got kill by one bomb in one day, what’s going to scare them?, they won’t move, that’s the common feeling. He continues “they are all bastards, they’ve threatened us with Haus Verbot, who cares!! I won’t move”, he also explains, “we are 122 people we can block a street if we have to stay outside”. After a while we remembered where we had met, he is friend of another guy that I met in another Lager, small world and nice to see the connections.
A lot of movement was going on, people coming and going, some women, the bosses of PeWoBe also were coming in, people really dislike them, they say again “they think we are animals”, but as many pointed out, “we are engineers, teachers, nurses,etc… we came here only because of the war”.
One of them tells me, he had lived in Turkey several years, he speaks Turkish, so he got a job in a Turkish restaurant, he works, he earns his own money, he does not depend on Lageso’s money, but he can’t get a room or a house, and in the Lager they don’t even keep the dinner for him, even knowing that he comes from work late.
Many are already in the Job center, that is they’ve been recognised as refugees, but nothing changes, another case, he has permission to find a room fro over 3 years, he was not able to get it, “what can be done? why do they tell lies to us?” he asks.
Inside the building people are talking, discussing what to do next, resist and try to stay or accept the transfer. The following video shows that atmosphere inside.
The day is rainy, cold, disquieting. Basically there are no supporters, but there is some press, a couple of media. Let’s see if something can be done.
In between, Markus brought us some tea outside, it was sooooo nice of him, and it did us so good, after some hours, the cold gets really inside, the fingers start get rigid, from the feet comes the direct cold of the ground, so to drink something hot was great!
Now I’m leaving again to go there, later I’ll continue.
Back again, I’ll continue with what has been a long day. While being outside and drinking our tea, more stories and thoughts were said. Some of them were threaten in their countries by official army, daesh, etc, there was no way to stay, behind they had to leave a whole life, family, friends, jobs that made them happy. One day they just had to start to way to Europe, under a promise of the “German dream”, after the way walking, traveling by sea, continue walking through the Balkan route until reaching Germany. And now what? All placed in crowded Lagers, under bad hygienic conditions, given bad food, suffering the pressure of the manager, receiving little help from social workers (except very special cases, that end up resigning due to differences with the company running the Lager), not able to get a job, to get a house even if they are recognised as refugees, to study. In this Lager, what was the German classroom, that had a library has become a room for 12 people, and the German lesson inside the Lager were canceled.
As Markus says “we come from a physical war to a psychological war”. That is what Europe is doing a psychological war on refugees.
Another guy joins the conversation, he starts explaining the living conditions in Kopenicker Alle Lager. His face is so white that I have the feeling he can faint, he is nervous, very stressed because of what is going on, of how they are treated as animals. He starts describing the Lager where they are supposed to be transfered to, in each room there are 12 people, there are no keys in the room, nor in the lockers, “I don’t care about money or things like handy, computers, etc .. but I need a safe place to keep all my diplomas. I’m a computer engineer”, the toilets are outside the Lager, when they were there to visit, he needed to go to the toilet, there were 13 people queuing in the cold and rain. He continued, “inside is like being in a jail, is like Guantanamo. We are not animals, we want human rights not animal rights. That place is so dirty, it has not been clean since World War I”, he also explained that the Lager is in the middle of nowhere, it took 30 minutes to walk to the first bus stop, then another half hour to get to the Sbahn that after 3 station will leave you in the East of Berlin, which means that if you have to cross the city for any paperwork, attend classes it will take another hour at least to get to the final place.
In another corner, while we were talking, woman from Lageso conving people to leaveIn another corner, while we were talking, the woman from Lageso (a group of people from Lageso have spent the whole day in the Lager trying to convince people to move to Kopenicker Alle Lager) comes outside and people start asking why are they treating them like that, what have they done, why are they lying to them, there are two floor in the current Lager being renovated and finish, why don’t they just move them to the upper floors, why are people being transfered while other people are getting registered… a big amount of questions are in everybody’s mind. There is only one answer, you will have to move, you can do it voluntarily or by force. There is no reasoning behind, no arguments, no explanations, I guess they think why should they explain themselves to this animals, the logics of power and business, the big business that refugees are in Germany right now.
I feel sad to see and not understand why people, good people are treated like this, is the same story that repeats itself Lager after Lager, there is nothing new in any of what I heard, is just new the people that tell it. On the other had I’m happy to have got in contact with the people in this Lager, maybe to have found new friends, today was a long day but a nice day, at the end of the day it was clear the the transfer would not be done nor today nor during the weekend, probably on Monday they will try again.
Sometimes people ask, but if we go what can we do? resisting means not moving, so “no action” is taking place, I will always say, just come and sit and chat with people that are resisting, let them know that there are people who care about what happens to them, that they are human and we always can provide human warmth, accompanying is also very political.
