ASUIHA and Café de Kraak
Location: Ludwig-Erhard-Str. / Ecke Holstenwall
(two minutes from U-St. Pauli)
13.12.20014
15:00 h – 17:00 h
food, hot drinks, discussion and more…
There are thousands of empty houses left unused in Hamburg. One the other hand, there s many people in urgent need for a place to sleep and space to organize. We will no longer stand this! Let’s get together to share our experiences, discuss and take action.
Our Aims
We as the association ASUIHA- African survival in Hamburg .We support the living together ,survival and the self organization of African migrants . We as well support Arts and culture, education ,the understanding amongst nation,peace and tolerance as well as respect .We offer and self organize as well legal advise in every aspect that is necessary to live and survive in the jungle of the juridical in European Asylum system and we provide as well medical care.
For information on cultural,historical and political subjects,we organize talks,seminars,discussions,group workshops and language course. We discuss and describe our situation as well as the situation of refugees in general in Hamburg ,Germany and Europe as a whole.
Our situation in hamburg
When we talk about our odyssey, we do so with reluctance and hesitation, as if we alone were responsible for our fate. Our journey took us halfway across Africa. We were living in Libya in dignity until war began. Then we had to flee to Europe in rickety boats. Only in Summer 2011 more than 2500 refugees were dying in the mediterranean sea – since 2000 it was more than 23000. After many detours, we ended up in Hamburg, where we now live on the street or in unheated shipping containers, hiding from the police. The police in Hamburg is currently searching for people like us, who are referred to as “illegals,” people who have fled their native countries but must now fear deportation because they were denied asylum. In deciding to have its police chasing refugees, the City of Hamburg has raised a difficult question: By cracking down, is the city committing injustice against humanity, or is it a sign that, finally, law and order are prevailing? There is no easy answer.
Flashpoint Hamburg
The situation has escalated more quickly in Hamburg than in other German cities. Some 10,000 refugees are living in the city illegally. The city-state’s senator of the interior has instructed the police to change their approach by making a concerted effort to determine the identities of the so-called illegals. Their fingerprints are taken, and they are questioned and summoned to hearings at the immigration office.
The mood has become so heated that, when a group of about 1,000 leftist protesters convened in front of the Rote Flora, a cultural center for radical leftists, last Tuesday evening, a few of them turned on the phalanx of police officers. The demonstrators, who were there in support of the refugees, threw rocks at the police and erected street barricades. A protest against the treatment of people like refugees suddenly became a fight against the “system” and capitalism as a whole.
Some of the refugees share their junkyards surroundings with a few acquaintances. Before coming to Germany, they had all envisioned it as a northern European paradise. Some of us now sleep in the cab of a broken truck. They have furnished their surroundings with discarded furniture, and they cook their meals on a camping stove. “And this is our bathroom,” some of the refugees say in English, pointing to a gasoline canister filled with water and, above it, a mirror wedged between two birch trees, held in place by four nails. “Like everything else, it isn’t quite up to German standards.” We turn to irony in our more hopeful moments, but most of the time we feel nothing but rage. So we live in this horrible situation in Hamburg now, this is the reason why we want to stand as Self determined Organization to unite and overcome our situation.
Life in dignity and the right of accommodation
We stand as refugees in Hamburg to demand our freedom and the right to live in dignity. We need a place to live as well. In Hamburg there are more than 2000 apartments empty and 40000 misused as offices – which should be rent as living space – so we demand that the empty houses are given to homeless people and to us refugees. We demand as well, the right to stay, to work, to be educated and for medical care.
Café de Kraak – Squatting Café
Inspired by the squatting offices in Amsterdam and Barcelona the Café de Kraak Hamburg came into living roughly two years ago, initially opening every second and fourth Tuesday every month. We intend to inform about the different ways and aspects of squatting, to invite other groups and activists to share their experiences and to network.
This year we organized several “Leerstandstouren” to vividly show and inform about the fact of many houses left empty for profit in Hamburg and demanding those houses to be given to people who need them.
We are in solidarity with the comrades of ASUIHA and their struggle!
That is why we are here together to demand that empty houses should be given to refugees, homeless people and other people who need space to live and organize. The building is state owned and empty for at least 3 years now. The former administration building is huge and has enough space for lots of people.
We demand the decriminalization of squatting! Access to housing for everyone!