What’s happened so far...
In 2011 we discovered hidden cameras in the „Justus-von-Liebig“ school, placed in front of the R94. These cameras were able to film our rooftop and the whole backside of the house, and even directly within private rooms, making it possible to spy on our housemates in their bedrooms. We made our discovery of these cameras public, and went to court to oppose it. Short after our public announcement, the LKA removed the cameras, before we could take a closer look at them. In the following juridical dispute we learned that the whole observation was planned for a 6 month period, but was interrupted by our discovery after just one week.
** The following translation was NOT made by the R94 collective. It is a (relatively sloppy) effort to communicate the information found in the R94 text to a wider audience. In a few parts, the original words have been altered. This is not in order to misrepresent their meanings, but rather due to a lack of knowledge in the translation-collective. If someone else wishes to do a better version – please go ahead.
This episode resulted in some bad press for the cops, extending far beyond the usual left-wing news platforms, even garnering public objections from side of the politicians, in particular those particularly concerned with questions of privacy.
We mention this brief surveillance episode so as to highlight the fact that the house is a permanent target for the organs of State repression.
On the evening of December 28, 2012, cops assaulted a party in the „Kadterschmiede“ (the public spaces on the ground floor of R94), following the „Polizeikongress“-rally. Though reasons were provided for this „spontaneous“ attack, it is clear for us that it had been planned well in advance. In the days leading up to the attack there had been a huge surveillance effort, including visits to the basement rooms of neighboring houses (which happen to have the same architectural layout). This is important, because they infiltrated us through the basement as well.
The subsequent procedure of the cops was not at all to try to arrest “criminals“ (which they initially stated was the basis for the raid), rather it was more about filming the inside of our building and arresting everyone within it, which included taking “ID“ from them. During this attack several people got beaten up by the pigs, who took the opportunity to also draw up a blueprint of the house.
On the grounds that one of the pigs (named Eric) vomited during the defense of our autonomous space, they even attempted to accuse us of „attempted murder”. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OL-OsrdCwCM
This imagined attempted murder served as the basis for the cops and the secret service to launch a wave of repression against our house over the coming months.
As our house has played an active role in political and social fights for over 20 years now, we are a thorn in the side of the cops. Because the R94 understands itself as a living, autonomous house project we are a permanent annoyance to the state and its organs of repression. We intend to continue to be remain so in the future, even if we must recognize that the repression and criminalization against us has reached a higher pitch lately. The state doesn’t hesitate to invoke lunatic fabrications like attempted murder, using any excuse to act against us.
As we write this in 2013, the history of fabrications and repression continues....
In May of this year both our house and the Kadterschmiede were mentioned for the first time in the annual report of Berlin’s secret service. The report dedicated a full page to our house, with direct quotes from our homepage finding their way into the report. In it, the secret service concludes that the inhabitants, guests and visitors of our house are the “inner core of militant left-extremists.”
Without the previously-prepared attack and the fabrication of attempted murder the whole report would not have been nearly as spectacular, and probably would never have been written. The lawsuit prompting the raid has already been dropped, yet they continue to use this fairy tale again and again. We would love to see for ourselves the 45 injured cops during the attack.
The planned assault on our house the preceding year, as well as our resistance and determination not to be frightened by repression provided them with a foothold to denounce our house in the public. As a result, our house is — at least in the public opinion — now marked, and future repression will be much more easy for the cops to explain.
At 6 a.m. on August 14, 2013 columns of Berlin police as well as the special forces stood at our front doorstep. Scared to death, they even brought a helicopter along with them. They searched two rooms of inhabitants, and several community rooms.
To justify the raid, they pointed to mobile contacts between one person and a defendant accused of attacking Jobcenters in May of this year. Accordingly there was a huge telecommunication surveillance in the days leading up to the raid. More info about the raid can be found here (in German): http://ea-berlin.net/repressionsmethoden-im-jahr-2013-am-beispiel-aktuel....
The excuse for raiding this other person was nothing more than their having been caught in the vicinity of a spontaneous demonstration. In this case as well, the cops have attempted to fabricate lunatic accusations.
Due to the evidence, we strongly believe that both charges will be dropped. So once again, the whole case is just one big concerted effort to intimidate and terrorize our collective.
For even if “only“ two members of our collective got raided, it affected the whole house and every inhabitant personally. Aside from the harassment of everyone present (such as the filming of our rooms) we were restricted in our freedom of movement for six hours. One of the persons raided was forced to give a DNA sample. Both raids served as a welcome excuse to take a closer look at the whole house, and to shake their various spaces, such as the Kadterschmiede and several kitchens. And to seize tons of our stuff.
As in the preceding year, the cops observed the house and surveyed entrance points together with the landlord a week before.
R94 – A Forecast
At the moment we are acting on the assumption that more raids may come. As we see it, we are being confronted by a Berlin-wide wave of repression against “radical left“ structures and individuals which reaches far beyond our house. In this sense we appeal to you all, to take care of yourselves and protect your structures. We send warrior greetings to everyone affected by repression.
Our solidary is more important now than ever. That a spontaneous demonstration such as the one that took place on the evening after the raids is a form of action which excludes a lot of people is obvious to us. But it was important for us to show a quick reaction.
But we have been astonished by the fact that so few people showed up to the registered and legal demonstration that Saturday (three days after the raid). We know that there were several other previously announced demonstrations that same day. We thank everyone who expressed their solidarity. But we wish that had been shown by a much wider range of folks. We have the feeling that many people regarded the raids as an incident that doesn’t really affect them, something that’s simply “their problem“. It is time to recognize that even if only one of us was struck, we are all targeted.
Conclusions drawn from the raids and the ensuing events.
We, as R94, support the initiative, in cases of raids and repression, to come together on the same day at a certain time for a Berlin-wide plenary to exchange information and plan a concerted action. Our feeling coming out of these raids is that it is most important to rapidly create a common information pool in which all the facts can be gathered.
We think it makes a lot of sense for there to be a common meeting to open up lines of communication, and to do so independently of digital media, or existing individual or group structures of communication. This way we can avoid rumors, false information and speculation. We also make it more difficult for police practices of telecommunication surveillance to succeed at gathering information about our group structures, to collect the data that they need to reconstruct our social networks, and in general to observe ever-larger groups of people. We also see an advantage in bringing people together who are not directly affected by the repression. For example, we can have a structure in place making it easier to organizing reactions where they are desired. It is a total pain in the ass to get raided and organize a spontaneous demonstration on the same day. By having a common meeting, we can better share out such tasks and plan things in a more clear-sighted way.
We are holding ourselves to the same expectations. We want to react as quickly as possible to raids. But this is only possible if we can develop a unified practice for making house raids public. If we don’t make them public by ourselves the bourgeois media will print nothing but whatever lies the cops give them. We see the end result, when we read things like “leftwing center of terror...” in the headlines, etc.
We’re not saying that it’s possible to create a counter-information solely through a common meeting, but it would at least give us tools to create something like this. For us it is important not to depend on the reactionary media as a sources of information in cases of repression. It only leads to rumors, and dramatically misrepresents the facts.
Yours,
R94