12/05/2026 8:36 πμ.
We are the collective of Rigaer94, a self-organized squat in Berlin. The house is one of many that were squatted in the 90s and is a space that resists pacification and struggles for a life in freedom and dignity ever since. Currently, eviction titles exist on eight of our appartments and even though bourgeois media portrays the situation as calm and claim an eviction would not be on the horizon, the threat is once again intensifying.
But not only the situation around the house is intensifying. While the state of Israel and USA continue to bomb Palestine, Iran and Lebanon, the German government is reintroducing compulsory military service, the Bundeswehr is being modernized and intervenes more and more in the healthcare system. Cuts are being made to just about everything everywhere – whether it is health insurance benefits, social benefits of Jobcenter or the cuts of social services in Berlin. The only pattern behind it to be recognized: What is social will be cut, while money is thrown at repressive measures that target society. New war technologies, developed by imperialist forces, often using artificial intelligence, are first tested in military war zones and on the deadly borders and later used in the social war on internal society as well. Thus, the surveillance state is now set to be expanded in Berlin as well and in 1984-style manner, AI-based video surveillance is to be installed, first in areas of alleged intensified criminality in which primarily migrants are criminalized and soon after also here, in Rigaer Straße. And so the attack is aimed more precisely at us as a movement. Only a few weeks ago, on March 24th, the police launched an all-out attack on the anarchist movement of Berlin and raided 17 appartments and projects and while in the same night antifascists are attacked by two Nazis with a machete, the speaker of the so-called police union speaks in finest NS rhetoric about „left wing extremism“ as a „cancerous tumour that is threatening democracy and is eating away at our society”.
What lies ahead
As we have reported last year, the deals that the old rent contract owners made with the self-proclaimed lawyers Bernau and Aretin of the alleged owner (Leonid Medved) are, not formally, but in fact, eviction titles.[https://rigaer94.squat.net/2025/11/24/traitors-deals-and-eviction-titles/] This adds upon two already existing eviction titles from the last years, which leads to a total of 8 eviction titles in the house. In the last months, the enemies withdrew some eviction lawsuits that seemed pointless for them. Even though because of this, some individuals are out of the eviction lawsuits, these are not good news to us – rather, it makes a scenario of eviction more likely, as there soon will be no open lawsuits, but only eviction titles left.
This being said, let’s recall the compensation agreement between Aretin and Medved that was leaked last year following a break-in at Leonid Medveds office [https://kontrapolis.info/16413/] – which got us to know, that they agreed on a bonus that Aretin is supposed to get when they manage to evict within two years of signing the contract.[https://de.indymedia.org/node/537374] These two years end on August 7th 2026, which means that he might aim to secure an eviction by then in order to receive his bonus.
Possibly, not only the alleged owner, but also Berlin politicians have an interest on a showdown around the house this summer. We know, that election campaigns in Berlin often revolved around the house as politicians thought to impress by taking a hardline stance against the house, aiming to evict it. Historically speaking, they have repeatedly failed to achieve this and it wasn’t just one career that was ruined by this. But even though they would be following in a tradition of poor results, we must remember that politicians remain unpredictable in their fight about power.
As for now and the past few years, the attack on the house was less in an obvious and visible way, but happened more through invisibilation and pacification. Where in the past, after every confrontation between us and the cops in the street there have been media articles, smear campaigns and politicians screaming for eviction, today a fire in the street is hardly worth mentioning. In line with this, the cops take a very passive stance in the street. We understand this not as a retreat from our enemies, but as different kind of attack on the house. The invisibilization is meant to undermine solidarity within the movement, their passivity on the street is meant to pacify us.
The picture the state draws about the house through mainstream media, when they report, is one of a house divided among itself, isolated from the rest of the movement, under no danger of eviction. These lies are not random, but aim to weaken the solidarity with the house, seperating it from the struggle around it. The key is to not fall for their narrative, but to place our trust in the structures that have been defending the house for decades, defend it now, and will defend it in the future.
No Space – No Movement
The house is an example of a lived reality in which refusal becomes possible. It is a space where disobedience, acts of resistance and a certain stubborness take form in everyday practices. It shows clearly and concretely that self-organisation is not merely a political imagination, but rather a tangible possibility.The current attacks are not just a threat to our home. The house has never been a living space only, and it is not owned by the people living inside of it. Rather, it is a space of the movement. For everyone who wants to bring ideas of autonomy into life. The house belongs to all of us. It stands for a city from below, without landlords, without oppressive dependencies on instituions and surveillance of everyday life. For us, the house is an expression of collective self-defence. A strategy against the isolating and assimilative force of the liberal regime, and against the states intrusion into every space and every life. In this line, the current attacks impose an eviction of movement histories, of lived examples of resistance rooted in space. It means an attack on our ideas, proposals, imaginations, and a resistant past that moves toward the possibility of a more liberated future. We understand an attack on the house as an attack on the values we carry within us. It is an attack on the idea of self-organisation, an attack on the attempt to liberate ourselves from state oppression and neo-liberal administration.
In the current poltical development and the intensified social war the state, neoliberal bosses, owners of capital and real etstate companies are waging against society, we see the need to organise more, to defend our relationships, our networks and our spaces. For ideas to become reality, they need to manifest in space. Space is the breeding ground for practices of autonomy. So that we can come together, discuss and build something with each other.
Our answer to repression is creation
Taking away or controlling space is one of the main tools for repressive regimes to force people into isolation. Besides forced evictions there are administrative layers of space regulation. Permits, zoning laws, noise regulation, ownership rules that aim at making it impossible to use space collectively, even when it is regarded as “public”. Privatization, administration and institutionalisation are all instruments to control our life through space. We see it in the rising of rents, to force people out of their neighbourhoods, we see it in the closing down of important social facilities through austerity policies to pour millions into the military. This makes autonomous spaces even more crucial, as they cannot be “cutted” away from us, according to the states interests. In this house, we are not dependent on conditions imposed on us by landlords or the German Staatsräson. We do not need to and will not negotiate our values, as we do not depend on fundings or administrative regulations. Especially in the current times of rising authoritarianism and censorship, the defence of Rigaer94, as a space that takes a clear anticolonialist stance for the liberation of Palestine as part of the liberation of all, becomes even more urgent.
We see the necessity for the struggle to be grounded in territory, so that the abstract becomes concrete and a collective memory can materialize, develop and continue. When we move through the house, experiences of resistance whisper to us from the walls. The house is a living archive of movement history, of different learnings and trying out diverse strategies. By defending the space, we commit ourselves to the continuation of this territorialized history. All of this is why the fight for space matters so much. We see that in Berlin, the movement is heavily repressed through space. The eviction of occupations, the fencing of squares and public parks – thus the creation of border-regimes inside the city – the creation of “danger zones” (kbOs). All of this is linked to the increased criminalization of everything and everyone who is not obeying to the fascist and zionist order the German state attempts to force on us. On this line, the defence of the house, to us, is the struggle create something by becoming loud, visible, united.
No Isolation – No Surrender
For us it is clear, that we will not remain on the defensive. Our tactics are varied and we are full of surprises. We will not ask anyone to do things we are not prepared to do ourselves, but we want to encourage people to take matters into their own hands. Our history has shown to us,[https://rigaer94.squat.net/2025/09/05/defend-rigaer94-the-kids-are-still-alright/] that it is possible to defend spaces through direct action and the community that exists around it.
According to this, our answer to the current attacks is to open further. To invite more groups, collectives and individuals to use the space and shape it with us. To take the streets, increase our visibility in the neighbourhood and build relationships to the movement as well as to society. We want to fight as part of society for society while at the same time showing that it is possible to attack the oppressors. This is why, next to social self-defence we are comitted to the physical defence of the house. Both cannot exist without each other, no single-defence strategy can open the path to victory. We are here, and we have decided to stay.
We call on everyone to join the struggle around Rigaer94, in whichever way preferred. Be it to come to our events or to organize one here yourself, be it to think about how to use the house or how to bring it to the streets.
Let us be creative and unpredictable.
Rigaer94
https://rigaer94.squat.net/