Barcelona Forum 2004: "sans-papiers" in cathedral forced to evacuate it with violence by the police

international | rights, freedoms and repression | news report Sunday June 06, 2004 16:21 by bad words

After the demostration of this sameday afternoon, 2 occupations, the church "Esglesia del Pi" and the Barcelona Cathedral. Cathedral has been disloged, the other resist. We don't know if all the arrested people is free now.

A demostration with a lot of persons (someone was saying 5-10000), "illegal" people, was at Barcelona streets the last afternoon.

At last, they go to occupy 2 churches at center of the city: Esglesia del Pi and the Cathedral. At the midnight, there are 200 persons at the first and 1000 at the cathedral. Then, the state police encircle the cathedral. The "left" and new catalonian government (socialists-ecopacifists-independentists) and the "left" and new state government (socialists) don't want to know nothing about this action. Some arrested people at the first church.

At 5:00, the police go inside the cathedral and force to evacuate it. Then, there are some attacks of the police at the cathedral square and outside Esglesia del Pi.

Today, sunday there are one demostration to help them: 18:00 in the center (pl. Catalunya)

It is important to remember it is celebrating in Barcelona the Forum 2004 of the Cultures, an institutional celebration, the face of the hypocrisy while in the streets we are celebrating the repression of the European fortress

(Never at the Franco's dictatorship the police goes inside a church to fight the antifranquists)

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(more info at www.barcelona.indymedia.org, best in catalan, spanish, working to translate to english, we need some help to do it)