Around 40 asylum seekers vowed on Tuesday to continue their stay at the rooftop of an old school building they occupied in Berlin to resist the eviction order filed by the municipality.
“If they try to evict us from the school now, there will be deaths. This is also known by the municipality for sure,” asylum seekers warned in a message they posted to their internet blog.
Hundreds of police officers have surrounded the occupied school in Berlin’s Kreuzberg district since last Tuesday and restricted access to the street.
Following the recent eviction order, hundreds of protestors gathered in the streets leading up to the old school building and through sit-down protests, tried to block police cars and buses. Police officers employed pepper spray to disperse the protestors.
Gerhart-Hauptmann School building was occupied by asylum seekers almost two years ago and became home to around 250 refugees. Some 200 of them voluntarily left the building last Tuesday, following the decision of the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg municipality and were transferred to refugee camps.
The protestors at the rooftop of the school building, who call themselves “roofugees”, refuse to return to the refugee camps stressing that they are isolated in the camps. Asylum seekers call for an end to deportation policies and demand freedom of movement, and the right to stay and work in Germany.
www.aa.com.tr/en
