BARCELONA: Police in northeastern Spain began carrying out eviction orders Wednesday to clear an abandoned school building where hundreds of mostly undocumented migrants were living in a squat north of Barcelona.
Knowing that the eviction was coming, most of the occupants had left before police in riot gear from Catalonia’s regional police entered the school’s premises early in the morning under court orders.
The squat was located in Badalona, a working class city that borders Barcelona. Many sub-Saharan migrants, mostly from Senegal and Gambia, had moved into the empty school building since it was left abandoned in 2023.
The mayor of Badalona, Xavier García Albiol, announced the evictions in a post on X. “As I had promised, the eviction of the squat of 400 illegal squatters in the B9 school in Badalona begins,” he wrote.
Lawyer Marta Llonch, who represents the squatters, said that many of them lived from selling scrap metal collected from the streets, while a few others have residency and work permits but were forced to live there because they couldn’t afford housing.
“Many people are going to sleep on the street tonight,” Llonch told The Associated Press. “Just because you evict these people it doesn’t mean they disappear. If you don’t give them an alternative place to live they will now be on the street, which will be a problem for them and the city.”
García Albiol, of the conservative Popular Party, has built his political career as Badalona’s long-standing mayor with an anti-immigration stance.
The Badalona town hall had argued that the squat was a public safety hazard. In 2020, an old factory occupied by around a hundred migrants in Badalona caught fire and four people were killed in the blaze.
Like other southern European countries, Spain has for more than a decade seen a steady influx of migrants who risked their lives crossing the Mediterranean or Atlantic in small boats.
While many developed countries have taken a hard-line position against migration, Spain’s left-wing government has said that legal migration has helped its economy grow.
Spanish police evict hundreds of migrants from squat deemed a safety hazard
https://arab.news/mjded
Spanish police evict hundreds of migrants from squat deemed a safety hazard
- The squat was located in Badalona, a working class city that borders Barcelona
Terrorism arrests in UK surged by 660% after Palestine Action ban
- Support for proscribed group was made a terror offense by govt in July
- Extreme’ ban decision renders UK ‘an international outlier,’ says barrister
LONDON: Arrests for terrorism offenses in the UK have spiked by a massive 660 percent year-on-year due to support for Palestine Action, new government figures show.
The pro-Palestine group was listed as a terrorist organization and banned in July. Now any public demonstration of support for the group is outlawed, and hundreds of protesters — who have used the slogan “I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action” — opposing the ban have been arrested in recent months, with the act now an offense under UK anti-terrorism legislation.
Of the 1,886 arrests in the year up to September for terrorism-related activity, 1,630 — or 86 percent — were linked to support for Palestine Action, government data released on Thursday shows.
In the previous year, 248 arrests were made in relation to incidents falling under anti-terrorism laws.
Among those arrested for supporting Palestine Action, protesters were 4.4 times more likely to be female, and were remarkably older, on average, than people typically arrested for alleged terror offenses.
The average age of those arrested in relation to Palestine Action was 57, compared to 30 among those arrested for all unrelated terror offenses.
Before the banning of Palestine Action, there were 63 arrests for terror-related activity between April and June this year.
Following the ban, the number of arrests within the category surged by 2,608 percent, with 1,706 arrests recorded from July to September.
The group’s proscription has been challenged in the High Court by co-founder Huda Ammori, whose barristers have argued that the ban’s impact was “dramatic, severe, widespread and potentially lifelong.”
Then-Home Secretary Yvette Cooper’s decision to ban the group was “novel and unprecedented,” Raza Husain KC told judges, adding: “This is the first direct action civil disobedience organization that does not advocate for violence ever to be proscribed as terrorism.”
The government’s decision in July was “so extreme as to render the UK an international outlier,” he said.
Cooper’s government body, the Home Office, was advised by the Foreign Office that Palestine Action’s “activity is largely viewed by international partners as activism and not extremism or terrorism.”
Representing the government, Sir James Eadie KC argued that Parliament reserved the right to decide what constitutes terrorism.
