Emergency announcement regarding an imminent attack and eviction of Prosfygika.
During the summer of 2025, secretly, the Region of Attica, through a programmatic agreement, initiated the planning for the repression and eviction of the Community of the Squatted on Alexandras Avenue.
With the beginning of 2026, it set in motion the new phase of its plan, using paid articles by government mouthpieces and promoting of all the steps that foresee for the violent eviction of the Community of Prosfygika within the next six months and – as usual – a major feast of public money.
Over the last decade, this is the fourth time that the state and the government have attempted to evict and plunder Prosfygika. This time appears to be the most serious and is about to be implemented immediately. All indications show that there is a plan that provides both the funding of the project – whose total estimated cost amounts to €15 million with European funding from the Attica Regional ESPA 2021-2027 – and, at the level of propaganda, the supposed creation of social housing and hostels for relatives of patients of the anticancer St. Savvas Hospital, attempting to exploit social sensitivities and reflexes.
They will not succeed, this time either!
Prosfygika constitutes a Community of more than 400 people, Greeks, refugees and immigrants, including 50 children, vulnerable social groups, people with serious mental health issues, cancer patients, elderly people, etc.
Over its 16 years of operation, drug dealing and productions spots – including hard drugs – that had plagued the neighborhood with the tolerance of the GADA (General Police Administration of Attica) have been removed, and 22 autonomous structures of social self-sufficiency, benefit and self-organization have been established for the people of the Community and the wider areas of Ambelokipi and Gkyzi. Indicatively, we mention:
– The Children’s House and Self-Education Structure and the Self-Organized Nursery School, operating daily with a full educational program, for the children of the Community of Prosfygika and the wider neighborhood, in direct cooperation with schools, parents’ associations and teachers’ unions in Ambelokipi, across Attica, and nationwide.
– The Health Structure and Social Pharmacy, offering care to neighborhood residents in need, in collaboration with dozens of self-organized health structures, social clinics, health workers’ unions in panhellenic level.
– The Hosting Structure for Patients and their companions from the Anticancer Hospital St. Savvas”, in cooperation with the hospital employees’ association.
– The Collective Bakery Structure “Berkin Elvan” producing bread and pastries daily for residents of the neighborhood and all of Athens.
– The Technical Works Structure for the continuous maintenance of Prosfygika buildings.
– The Collective Café and Cinema Structure for children and adults, offering entertainment and contributing to the cultural development of residents of the neighborhood and Athens more broadly.
– The Social Center, which hosts the Community’s weekly general decision-making assembly and the Library and Reading Room Structure of the neighborhood. Over the years it has also hosted numerous events, presentations and assemblies of a social, political and cultural character, both of the Community and of various other social groups and collectives.
– The Women’s Structure, aimed at the collectivization and empowerment of women and femininities, the creation and dissemination of a culture opposed to the patriarchal system, also functioning as an emergency shelter to host women and femininities in need.
– The Solidarity Group, hosted within the Community’s infrastructure which provides food five days a week to dozens of people in the center of Athens.
All Community structures are open to everyone and operate on the basis of self-organization and social solidarity
Already within the last year, the Community has publicly announced its decision to carry out the external renovation of the Prosfygika buildings, through self-financing and with the participation and support of architects, civil engineers and other […] technical specialists. The Region’s plan is a response intended to preempt this social initiative in order to lay hands on public money.
This new attempt by the Region constitutes a central political directive and decision of the Mitsotakis regime to dismantle the largest social project currently existing within the urban fabric of Athens and nationwide, one of the largest in Europe, which has attracted the attention and interest of universities and cultural and educational institutions, in Greece and abroad.
Beyond its social character, the Community of Prosfygika, has consistently been on the the front line of social, political, class based, and internationalist struggles, while militants from Greece, Europe, and revolutionary organizations from Turkey and Kurdistan also reside within the Community. The Mitsotakis regime sees Prosfygika both as a political opponent it seeks to destroy and economic asset it dreams of plundering and exploiting.
This is a political decision that, behind the lies about the “neighborhood development”, aims at expelling people and dismantle social models of self-organization and social contribution. It is clear that, among other things, it is yet another pre-election trick of a collapsing government whose only remaining product is the doctrine of “law and order”.
– They are liars when they claim that the Region cares about social housing. Prosfygika already constitute social housing for hundreds of people whom the crisis pushed onto the streets and the collapse of all social structures forced into misery and marginalization. Their plan to throw more than 400 people onto the streets in order to accommodate 50 of their own is the height of hypocrisy and inhumanity of a system that cares exclusively about its own profit and the plunder of public and European funds. It is a shameless excuse to loot the already existing social housing of the Prosfygika for new social housing, when 80,000 vacant apartments owned by the Municipality of Athens remain empty and unused in the center.
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– They are liars when they claim that the Region cares about the relatives of cancer patients whom the Community has hosted and cared for for years – people who often sleep in their cars for days or weeks while their loved ones undergo long-term treatments. The community of Prosfygika already provides healthy living conditions and support through its own labor and resources. The Region plans to throw relatives of cancer patients onto the streets while setting up clientalist relationships with people in need. At the same time, countless properties owned by the state and the church lie just a few blocks away from Prosfygika.
– They are liars when they claim that the Region cares about social issues in the neighborhood, when the Prosfygika is an example of the harmonious coexistence of people from all parts of the world, 27 different nationalities and corresponding languages, cultures and religions. It is the only neighborhood adjacent to an OKANA (Drug Addiction Treatment Organization) unit without a drug dealing hotspot. The only public safety problem in the area is the policies of the GADA and the Ministry of Public Order, which periodically invade the neighborhood with tear gas – bordering two hospitals – to dismantle a self-organized Community promoting a different model of social equality and justice.
– They are liars when they claim to care about the utilization of the Prosfygika and the development of Ambelokipi. The redevelopment of Prosfygika will cause rents and living costs to skyrocket across the area, forcibly displacing dozens and hundreds of our neighbors who cannot withstand the high cost of life. This condition will gradually affect all the surrounding areas, changing the social composition by displacing existing residents in favor of the wealthier.
We call on every person with conscience and empathy to stand by beside the Community of Prosfygika, against the plans for eviction and plundering of this historic neighborhood of resistance, self-organization and refuge.
We call on everyone to mobilize and communicate our struggle in their neighborhood, family and social circles, schools, unions and workplaces, to protect Prosfygika from the predatory plans of government swindlers.
Those who did not care about the lives of 57 people on the trains. Those who have turned Greece into Europe’s dumping ground. Those who have dismantled every social structure and public service of health, education, housing and culture. Those who let so many people die during COVID. Those who have reduced the farmers and the countryside to beggars. Those who have driven half a million young people from the country in the last decade. None of them deserve any trust regarding Prosfygika, and everyone must know the dirty plans hidden behind their words.
The eviction and repression of Prosfygika will have incalculable consequences for the mental and physical health of dozens of children, elderly people and patients in the Community. Many of them will not be alive in the year following the eviction – by responsibility of the government and its agents.
The eviction and repression of the Refugee Housing will also affect the movement and all ongoing struggles, as every liberated space that is lost is a blow to the common struggle against exploitation and injustice experienced by nearly all of society.
For our part, we have a responsibility and a duty to defend the homes we have cared for selflessly for years as if they were our own, keeping alive a national and architectural monument that state planning would have allowed to collapse in order to profit from its reconstruction. We have a responsibility and a duty to defend the people of our Community, who would otherwise end up sleeping in cardboard boxes, in hunger and misery.
We publicly declare that we will not give up a single inch of land to the regime and its companies, and that we will fight with all our strength to practically cancel their dirty plans – even with our lives. We have a historical and social duty to struggle and to continue.
We will ensure that the enormous cost we are forced to bear to protect our neighborhood and Community will be even greater for the government and its agents.
If we fall, we will fall on their heads
We call on:
– Everyone, individuals, collectives, unions, associations, organizations, to do everything possible to break the operation of repression and eviction of Prosfygika.
– Everyone, individuals, collectives, structures, initiatives to stand alongside or come to live in Prosfygika.
– Everyone to remain vigilant against possible provocations by the state and police, who will attempt to divide and break the Community and our common struggle.
No Prosfigyka for Mitsotakis and his companies – Prosfigyka for social resistance, self-organization, equality and solidarity
Not a single euro of public money for the redevelopment of Prosfigyka
Full responsibility to the community – self-funded and self-organized
Hands off Prosfigyka
Either we win, or we win
Assembly of Squatted Prosfygika (SYKAPRO)
Alexandras Avenue
Athens, Greece
prosfigika [at] riseup [dot] net
https://sykaprosquat.noblogs.org/
Some squats in Athens: https://radar.squat.net/en/groups/city/athens/country/GR/squated/squat
Some evicted squats in Athens: https://radar.squat.net/en/groups/city/athens/country/GR/field_active/1/squated/evicted
Groups in Athens: https://radar.squat.net/en/groups/city/athens/country/GR
Events in Athens: https://radar.squat.net/en/events/city/Athens/country/GR
Some squats in Greece: https://radar.squat.net/en/groups/country/GR/squated/squat
Groups in Greece: https://radar.squat.net/en/groups/country/GR
Events in Greece: https://radar.squat.net/en/events/country/GR
| Themes |
| • Advocacy • Communication and dissemination • Forced evictions • Housing rights • Legal frameworks • Local • Low income • Property rights • Public policies • Refugees • Squatters • Squatting / occupation |
