Monday came and with it, the stress of the possibility of being thrown out of the Lager, the place where many have lived for more than one year or at least several months. The eviction could happen at any moment.
At 7 o’clock the workers of the lager, started waking everybody up, they had to remove their stuff from their rooms, they even said they had to bring out the beds and blankets. Only astonishment came from the side of the people living in the lager, why should be treated like that?, they are just asking that decisions are communicated in advance, so that they can organize things, they just want to understand why in 24h they have to leave for no reason, just one reason, none were given until now.
The more close to a reason was when someone said, “well Lageso realised that is not really legal to have you so crowded, so now they want to apply the law, for their own safety”. As I heard this I really wondered if someone could really accept that as an argument, all lagers are not at any point fulfilling human conditions, crowed, with no good hygienic conditions, food is shit (literally), many times there is no medical support, social workers who are not really doing their job, no places for study, without talking about how they are many times treated with disdain, ignored, etc, etc. but the German government is paying lots of money to these companies so that all needs should be covered, but everything is just a bunch of business interests in all sides, except in the refugee side.
One of the facts of what is going on at Bornitzstr 102 is that PeWoBe has been asked to leave this management of the Lager and another company should take care, PeWoBe looks like does not want to give up, so now is a duel between companies. Maybe is good to remember the PeWobe scandal, I’ll just cite DW article from August 2016:
“Far beyond gallows humor
Now that the internal correspondence full of macabre remarks has merged, professionalism is the last thing that comes to mind in connection with PeWoBe. Via email, several senior employees discussed what they should do with a 5,000 euro ($5,600) donation.
A sandbox was out of the question because the residents “would quickly turn it into an ashtray or a local toilet,” wrote Peggy M, director of one of the shelters. Instead, she suggested getting a “child guillotine.”
Berlin minister Mario Czaja canceled the company’s contract
Oher employees sent her photos of guillotines and decapitated heads. Beheadings are so messy, another female colleague warned: “There’s always splatter.” They also discuss a crematorium for which they would award an environmental certificate because the waste heat “is used for a cause.”
“We’re so good,” the employee concluded, adding that the “maximally pigmented” refugees could do the cleaning up.
The email correspondence was leaked to the city of Berlin, and over the weekend, the media began to pick it up.”
And this company got the contract because of direct contacts with Berlin’s Department for Health and Social Affairs, that is called corruption, a word that in Germany is still not too used, but which is also full of.
So, although most of the people in the morning were decided to go to Lageso/Laf, to check what was going on and what were the possibilities, once they were out, some people that stayed ended up calling because the workers were starting to move their things out ( — you know “it’s their job”, they get paid to do anything the boss says –), so everybody back to the rooms to resist this way of being thrown out, like animals.
So most of the people stayed, but a group of people went to Lageso to talk and see what options were possible.
In between I got some more information of what was happening, they removed the locks from the doors and they cut the electricity of certain rooms. Of course still no food for those “in the list”, it does not matter if there would be enough or not, is just a question of punishment.
The rest of the day, was more or less “calm”, this calm tension of uncertainty, of feeling not worth even an explanation, knowing that somewhere there is legal battle to keep the business of a NUK, and that there is no political action to prevent this situation.
Inside, we were able to chat, have a cup of tea, and see some photos of how beautiful is Syria, talk about friends, family, differences in Europe, we are able to laugh, and enjoy despite the situation. Moment like this are better than gold.
At the end of the day, a couple of buses parked outside the Lager, and took some people to Spandau.