Itziar and Iñaki, Zabaldi’s internationalist militants, were arrested in the eviction of a space occupied by migrants and Greeks in Thessaloniki.

The police operation resulted in three evictions and several detainees, some of whom have already been tried. These two comrades will not be present at the trial.

On July 27, the police carried out the coordinated eviction of three buildings that had been squatted in Thessaloniki, Greece, which provided shelter to some of the thousands of displaced persons who were trapped in the country following the border closure.

The people who were in the buildings were then treated differently: non-European migrants were sent to militarized refugee camps, while Greeks and Europeans were detained and prosecuted, including the two Zabaldi militants. This Thursday, January 26, two of the three trials related to these events will be held. The comrades are facing squatting and property damage charges.

The three projects, Orfanotrofeio, Nikis and Hurriya, responded to the needs of people trapped by the closure of borders in Europe. Nikis was a squatted social center that decided to welcome migrants who had to stay in the country due to closed borders. Orfanotrofeio was squatted in December 2015 in order to accommodate displaced people. Its food store, pharmacy and all the collected materials were lost when the building was demolished after the eviction.

Hurriya was a new project, it was occupied only for two weeks and was full of people dedicated to the tasks of reconstruction and adaptation to make it habitable. It was a project of coexistence and joint struggle, in which people from the social movement and migrants would live on the basis of self-management.

(via Ahotsa, translated by BlackCat)