IndyMedia - Vrij Media Centrum Nederland

(as promised: english translation of the text)

Statement by the new inhabitants of Bellamystraat 135hs

To everyone interested,

As long as there is emptiness and a need for housing, people will squat. The dutch 'kraken en leegstand' law, that should be aimed not only at banning squatting but also at fighting emptiness, is only being enforced partly. While the state evicts squats in a law and order fashion, where the law is the law and nobody can get around it, the other part of the same law is treated like it doesn't even exist. The state once again shows it's real aim: while repression is constantly rising capital is still being defended.

We want to live in a world in which bosses, cops and politicians don't tell us what we can and can't do, where no relationship is based on authority, and where everybody is treated equally, but no one has to be the same. The capitalist system that we now live in does not offer us any chance for this: we're kept busy with the newest crap manufactured by childlabour and we're kept scared with an economic crisis. Meanwhile exactly this crisis is used to take all our social rights, rights that have been fought for for so long, and they put a large 'for sale' sign on them.

We're sick of it. We're sick of seeing how many buildings are empty in our city. We're sick of waiting for more than ten years to get a social rent house, and even more of the fact that we have to wait until we are 'allowed' to get a house. We're sick of seeing 'legal' inhabitants being fucked over by both private and corporation-speculators. We're sick of our neighbourhoods being taken over by tapas-restaurants and fancy lunch- and coffeehouses. We're sick of everything being for sale, being sold, and the ideal citizen being a robot just sleeping, working and spending. We're sick of the state, that criminalises everyone who wishes to break out of this cage, and only takes care of itself. We're sick of getting evicted every couple of months, for emptiness, for anti-squat, or just because all those riot cop-uniforms on the street make the mayor so horny.

We don't believe that squatting a small house in the West of Amsterdam will invoke revolution, but we refuse to give up and watch our homes being given back to those who neglected them for years and years. Living in negation of the squatting-law is just a small step. We don't just want this house, we want the total anarchy.

Signed,
The post-ideological generation of squatters