HABITAT: Symbolism Meets State Power At Housing Rights Protest

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

ISTANBUL, Jun 6 1996 (IPS) - Symbol and reality converged Thursday when nearly 1,000 protestors demonstrating against forced evictions by state authorities were themselves forced to disperse at Istanbul’s Galata Bridge by Turkish police.

Although dozens of armed riot police ended the demonstration before the marchers could proceed to the site of the Second U.N. Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat II) here, the roughly 50 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) represented declared success at making their points.

The groups demanded that governments halt forced evictions of settlers, allow abandoned or unused buildings to be made available for housing for the poor, and commit themselves to a right to affordable and accessible quality housing.

“Evictions are being forced to make way for golf courses and malls,” said Corazon Soliman, a march organiser from the Philippines. “We will continue to struggle to stop evictions.”

“We consider that wealthy countries have to help people living in poverty to gain dwellings or land,” added Daniel Galand, of the French group Droit au Logement (Right to Housing), which led a rally of bicyclists across the bridge.

“Today is the beginning of an international struggle to make known these points,” Galand said.

Yet it was a struggle that was abbreviated when Turkish police stopped the marchers at the northern end of Galata Bridge, and denied they had a valid permit to proceed further. Rezat Altoy, deputy chief of police for Istanbul, said the protestors had not received the appropriate authorisation to move onto the streets of Istanbul, and were blocking traffic.

“The organisers believed they had a permit,” countered Michael Kane of the U.S. group Tent City USA, one of the march organisers. “Something got lost in the translation.”

Another march official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the police objected to the handing out of leaflets asking for housing rights and to the presence of Kurds in the march.

“At the start (of the march), some police started threatening a few of the Kurds,” the official said. “Some people got so intimidated that they left.”

‘SuperBarrio’, the red-and-gold costumed Mexican wrestler and slum activist, found the hour-long confrontation with Turkish authorities and ultimate dispersal a reminder of his own experiences with housing protests in Mexico.

“It’s the same in all countries of the world,” he shrugged. “Maybe Turkish police are more notorious as aggressive. But in all cities, the police are the same, fighting to stop demonstrations and violating our right to expression.”

For many protestors, the sight of a cordon of riot police with submachine guns and bulletproof shields was a familiar sight. The march in fact comprised many activists from around the world who themselves have been forced from housing and faced with state repression when they protest.

SuperBarrio, one of the march marshals, noted that on Wednesday, 350 families were forcibly evicted from Goiania, a city in central Brazil where housing activists have seized many unoccupied buildings recently.

“They were evicted violently by police and (attack) dogs,” SuperBarrio said. “This repression is being confronted by the people in our cities with unity and solidarity.”

Galand said Droit au Logement continues to be harassed by French authorities, who have sued the organisation over its seizure of idle buildings to house France’s homeless.

Governments like France may be willing to establish housing as a right at the Habitat II conference, he argued, but are still unwilling to implement that right by halting forced evictions and freeing up idle buildings.

The same thing happens in Pakistan, where the government has razed Karachi’s ‘kutchee abadis’ (shanty towns) and promised better housing for the settlers, but has not delivered, said Shakil Ghori of the group Raasta Pakistan. “They promise us, ‘You will receive all sorts of benefits’, but deliver us nothing,” he complained.

Park Mun So, a member of the South Korean NGO Forum for Habitat II, said many members of his group of marchers had been run out of low-cost housing by state authorities, in order to develop middle- class housing units instead.

For these groups, simply asserting a right to adequate housing may not be enough. At the first Conference on Human Settlements, in Vancouver, Canada, in 1976, the U.N. member states agreed that “adequate shelter and services are a basic human right that places an obligation on governments to ensure their attainment for all people.” But that declaration has not paved the way for affordable housing, the marchers argue.

The most vivid symbol of that disparity at the march was the presence of Kurdish groups protesting the destruction of housing in Anatolia and across the country’s troubled south-east.

The rally dispersed peacefully only after the march organisers, following an hour of negotiation with the Turkish police, won assurances that the Kurds would not be harmed after the march broke up.