Thursday, July 23, 2009

Prague: an attack on the last nonconformists


At the end of June, authorities in Prague evicted residents from Milada, a pre-war villa that had been seized by squatters more than ten years ago. The Prague weekly Respekt called it "an attack against the last vestige of nonconformism in a gloomy city." -- summary at Press Europ

Radio Prague reported that the eviction was planned "after a number of complaints from the students [in a neighboring dormitory] about noise and aggressive dogs." -- translation here

That's an awfully shabby reason for the government to evict people.

It's also a great irony that it was a government agency -- the the Institution for Information on Education -- that hired private security guards to push the squatters out. the Czech Republic's Human Rights Minister, Michal Kocáb, intervened to relocate the squatters into a privately owned building downtown, but the last four older residents of that partially occupied building fear that this is a move by the landlord to drive them out -- details at Ceske Noviny

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

The prague squatters have a website worth visiting: http://squat.net/praha/ .

Rory said...

i, these squatters took over a building today on Na Slupi, Prague 2. http://blog.rorywilmer.com/?p=797

rn said...

Thanks, Rory. Keep us updated!