Campaign against anti-squatting measure opens

12 June 2006

AMSTERDAM (ANP) – Squatters in Amsterdam and around the country have begun a campaign against the government’s plans to make all forms of squatting illegal. On Monday banners with the text ‘Made possible by the squatter’s movement’ were hung from the windows of 150 squatted premises in 15 places around the country.

Ministers Piet Hein Donner (Justice) and Sybilla Dekker (Housing, Spatial Planning and Environment) on Friday announced that they would be introducing changes in legislation that would make all forms of squatting illegal. Until now it has been legal to occupy premises that have stood empty for longer than a year.

Activists placed the first banners, which read “Squatted”, on “pop temples” Paradiso and Melkweg in Amsterdam on Monday morning, a spokesperson for the “committee against the ban on squatting”. He said that more campaign actions would follow Monday’s.

The squatters say that squatting has become more necessary than ever. “There are around 8 million square metres of office space presently standing empty in the Netherlands,” the spoksperson said. “This ban will undermine the purpose of squatting. We want the empty buildings to be used, that owners take responsibility and do something with them.”

Banners have also been hung on buildings in Nijmegen, Eindhoven, Deventer, Rotterdam, Utrecht, Groningen, Den Haag, Arnhem, Assen and Zwolle.

Subject: Dutch news