The building in Zurich Wipkingen is to be handed over to the electricity works again.
A good two dozen police officers, some of them in full gear, are standing in front of the boiler house in Zurich on Tuesday morning.
At around 8 a.m., the city police issue a final ultimatum. Then the evacuation of the boiler house on Wasserwerkstrasse in Zurich Wipkingen, which has been occupied for about a week, begins.
Around fifteen police cars and a good two dozen police officers can be seen on site carrying out the action. The emergency services remove the squatters’ posters from the dilapidated EWZ building and carefully fold them up. According to a police statement, the authorities did not find anyone inside the house. There were only a few people outside the building who left when the police arrived.
According to a local police officer, there were four activists who did not resist. There were also no arrests.
It was evicted because the municipal electricity company (EWZ) filed a criminal complaint against the occupiers last Thursday. According to the police, the monument protection was also endangered due to planned structural changes by the squatters. “The conditions for a police evacuation were met,” the police said. The boiler house will now be handed over to the EWZ again.
Autonomists are disappointed
The Left Alternatives justify the occupation of the Kesselhaus primarily with the fact that Zurich lacked “autonomous cultural spaces”. With the early end of the large-scale occupation of the Koch area in Albisrieden in February 2023, the “largest autonomous free space in Switzerland” will be lost.
The Zurich city police are on site with around fifteen vehicles.
Autonomists in front of the vacated house say they find it a pity that the police did not negotiate and that there was no dialogue. They confirm that the operation was peaceful. The Autonomen do not appear angry, rather resigned, disappointed. Many residents have supported them, they say. In fact, some of them are on site. The resident of a nearby house says he wasn’t bothered by the occupation – on the contrary.
AL local council calls for consequences
Local councilor Moritz Bögli (AL) is also on site. He says: “I show my solidarity with the occupiers”. He cannot yet say whether the AL will react politically to the eviction. However, he finds: “It needs political consequences.”
The evacuation of the boiler house is the second within a month. At the beginning of October, an office building in Wipkingen, only a few hundred meters away from the boiler house, was occupied and after a short time cleared by the police and handed over to the owner.
update follows.