Violent conflict in a former dormitoty in Moscow, tenants resisted bitterly
The inhabitants of house № 17 in Stavropolskaya street in Moscow have been challenged with forced evictions.
Early morning, on September, 18th, the inhabitant saw riot police vans, other special service vehicles, an ambulance, several big trucks and removal porters, who were holding something in their hands which looked like ‘’battering rams’’, something which was designed to ram into the close doors.
The Stavropolskaya street, 17, house is a former dormitory, which was owned by the CentroTransStroy company, one of the many Soviet state run construction companies turned into joint stock companies in the 1990 ies. The tenants were accommodated in this house as a result of their employment by the said company given that they had been put on a list of those in need of better housing by the company. However, when the company turned on the verge of bankruptcy, the RosImuschestvo, the main Russian state property agency, issued an instruction on further use of the house and its further handover to the business operation by the PromEx FGUP company.
Since 2010, through a series of fraudulent schemes this residential house was withdrawn from the list of municipal housing and rendered into the status of untenable; later it was handed over into the federal property balance; however, the tenants had not been granted new adequate housing according to the applicable law and stayed in the house.
The house tenants are convinced that they have become victims of a regular corruption scheme, which involves senior managers of the PromEx company and former chief of the RosImuschestvo agency.
The corrupt officials and businessmen intended to turn the dormitory house into a kind of a hostel, to rent out its rooms and apartments to tourists and foreign students.
Despite everything, the tenants are dead set to defend their housing rights.
In August, 2016, the tenants fought back the first attempt of eviction, and the tenants’ initiative group won three court litigations, and they have all the necessary documents confirming their legal right for their housing.
An attempt of bribery was recorded - some murky businessmen tried to buy the initiative group members with a 800 000 rubles kickback, but the attempt failed. Following this, a decision was taken to evict the tenants by force.
On September, 18th
, at about 9 a.m. an attempt was made to forcefully evict the tenants from their apartments and vacate the house.
The onslaught was perpetrated by a 30 men strong special service squad- two meters high thugs, seven footers, wearing black uniforms with chevrons on their sleeves, equipped with riot gear, armed with firearms; those were Federal Bailiffs Service agency officers. The armed men pushed aside the tenants who tried to defend their housing on the house entry, the entry phone having been broken, the lock having been smashed; the house was broken into and the entry was blocked.
The tenants heard soon the crying of their scared children; however, the ‘’securities’’ positioned at the entrance didn’t let the parents go to their kids despite all the protests and pleadings.
The onslaught was violent, physical force was meted out without restraint; a 14 year old girl was dragged by her hair, some tenants were pushed down the stairs, a woman had her arm broken, an elderly woman, an invalid, was pushed into her back, a man had his eyebrow bloodied. One of the apartments was broken into, the apartment being rented by a mother of four children, with three of them being minors; a sick child was forcefully pulled from his bed and evicted from the room; the apartment was sealed off.
Other facts of violence can be testified by the witnesses.
The tenants called the police and appealed to the child services. None of those civil service offices responded. By the end of the eviction, a police patrol car pulled down at the house, with the officers not intervening, and a police officer, who got out of the car, refusing to answer the journalists’ questions. Several ambulances arrived at the scene to render help the victims of violence.
Then a Russian parliament deputy from the KPRF party and journalists of local mass media arrived at the place, which made a certain effect on the thugs in uniforms.
Then, suddenly someone called the attackers, they stopped their operation and left the place as promptly as they had been carrying out the eviction operation, having promised the tenants that they would return soon.
The tenants believe that it was a regular attempt of intimidation, the second one since 2016, with an outright demonstration of who really wielded power in today’s Russia.
On September, 19th , the Stavropolskaya 17 house tenants visited the chief office of the Federal Bailiffs Office demanding that they be explained the causes of the eviction attempt.
On September, 22, the tenants paid a visit to the Russian President Office, and on the roof of the house a sign appeared, with the words ‘’Putin, stop the lawlessness! SOS’’.
By now, the situation with the Stavropolskaya 17 house is far from being over, and the tenants are expecting other provocations and attempts of eviction.
The local mass media and human rights activists are closely watching the ongoing events, ready to intervene if necessity.