Press release by IG Kultur Österreich from July 29, 2010

Dear members!

On the afternoon of July 6, 2010, three shared flats in Vienna were raided and three people arrested. At around 4 p.m., the police broke the door lock of the Kaleidoskop clubhouse at Schönbrunnerstraße 91 in the fifth district and kicked in the door. Numerous ? partly private ? Objects such as computers, hard disks, workshop materials and the safe, including the cash boxes and documents inside, were taken, and further material damage was caused. The association was not informed of the break-in by the executive. At around 6 p.m., a user of the open space found the premises locked by the fire department. The damage could only be assessed later that evening.
Two weeks later, another person was taken into custody as part of the same investigation. The four detainees are still in custody today, at the end of July.

According to the State Office for the Protection of the Constitution and Counter-Terrorism (LVT), the official reason for the house searches is the suspicion that the club premises were the storage, preparation and starting point for a symbolic action directed against the Public Employment Service. (A few weeks earlier, two garbage bins had burned in the portal of the AMS Redergasse 1). However, the only obvious reason seems to have been the proximity of the clubhouse to the AMS (around 170 m away).The Kaleidoskop is a self-managed venue run by the "Association for the Promotion and Preservation of Cultural Communication and Participation" and is an independent part of the KuKuMa network (= art, culture and media alternatives). It is a project that defines itself as a free space for reflected and self-determined everyday life. It is non-commercial and is available to people who want to implement ideas and projects there free from consumer pressure. The project works independently of fixed funding amounts and is financed exclusively by voluntary donations, and the activists work on a voluntary basis. What is important here is the aspiration to question and overcome restrictive mechanisms such as sexism, racism, homophobia, hetero- and other normativities that are anchored in contemporary society and to prevent them from gaining a foothold

The desire for a society free from oppression is apparently so "dangerous" that flimsy reasons are used to violently invade free spaces and thus sabotage them. Self-managed spaces are easily targeted by the control authorities. Any criticism of society, any alternative way of life and any publicizing of grievances comes under suspicion. In fact, every association or other private user of premises can expect the police to take legal action (kicking in the door is certainly not one of them). Don't the police have to present a court-approved search warrant - after the door has been OPENED by the users? Repression is becoming more and more severe: for example, the right of the police to search foreigners takes precedence over the constitutional right to inviolability of privacy - this is unbelievable and intolerable.

We are in solidarity. With Kaleidoskop and other associations, spaces and people affected by repression! We demand the immediate release of the four detainees! For free, self-designed spaces and unhindered autonomous cultural work!

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| IG Kultur Austria
| Gumpendorfer Str. 63b
| A-1060 Vienna
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| ZVR: 998858552
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| Tel. +43 (01) 503 71 20
| Fax. +43 (01) 503 71 20 - 15
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| http://www.igkultur.at/