The A.C. den Ezelhoek in Belgium is a place of violence, sexism and machismo. Watch out! The so called Autonomous Center in Rollegem, Belgium (I will from now on refer to it as „the house“ as I dont want to call it AC) is the farthest thing from what an a.c. should stand for and I feel obliged to tell about it.
I am not from Belgium, but I lived in this place for about 4 months in 2012 and it was the most horrible time of my life.
They call themselves squatters, but the house actually belongs to the
father of one of the guys (I will refer to this guy as ***). In the
beginning they all lived there for free but when *** left for a travel
his friends suddently had to pay rent to his dad. It would have been
possible to talk with his father and avoid the rent, but no attempts had
been taken.
Since he returned from his travel his friends still have to pay rent. Again he didnt try to stop the rent.
They call themselves autonomous, but actually no one is allowed to decide anything but ***. If you change anything to make the place nicer he will yell at you and rip it down.
They call themselfes Anarchists, but decisions are not made together, no discussions, no consens, no meetings. It was ***’s way or no way.
They call themselves ecological, but the garden was a mud hole, where
all the time people slipped walking up to the house and hurt themselfs.
To avoid further injuries I put alot of work into the garden, making a
path out of stones I collected in the fields, sewed gras next to it and
made a little vegetable bed.
His reaction : he yelled three days and threatened to destroy it all. In
the end he didnt but he showed no respect to the little plants. While a
few meters away he made his own vegetable bed and became furious if
anyone touched it.
The sentence I heard most was „Don’t do that, *** wont like it.“
They call themselve left, but they where all open about their anti-gay opinions (which in respect to my beloved gay friends i will not quote here) and their disrespect against women was also more than obvious. Degrading comments about your girlfriend as soon as she left the house was an every day joke.
Over all, there was alot of yelling at each other, people that disagreed with *** got yelled at and insulted, called „stupid retards that should go kill themselves“ and thrown out of the house.
I got to live in the house because of my then-boyfriend A.
He always talked about Buddism and RiotGrrrl-Bands but sarcastically was
a very violent person, who repeatedly beat me up when I didn’t do what
he wanted.
I was not allowed to talk to any of the other guys while he was not
there because he was so heavily jealous. Whenever I wanted to break up
with him he beat me through the living room, took my stuff away,
threatened to thrown me out without my phone or money, while locking me
into the house. When I tried to run away once he followed me to the
train station and pulled me out of the train and threatened to kill
himself, me, my parents and all my friends if I left him. He broke my
glasses so I wouldnt find my way to the train.
He repeatedly jelled at me, pushed me, and used physical and mental
force and manipulation to make me stay with him against my will.
When I finally found the strengh to get away from him, he continued to harras me and my friends via internet for 3 months.
I dont know this for sure, but I just cannot believe that no one in the house noticed how horrible the situation was for me. Still, no one said anything and it was clear to me that they either didnt care or where on his side.
I admit that I was a bit naive at the time and I just didnt expect anything like this when I first got there. For a long time I blamed myself for letting myself get into this and not beeing able to leave sooner.
But now I can finally say : NO ! This was NOT my fault !
I am not responible for the behaviour of others and I cannot accept a place like that and a person like that to continue doing political work, calling themselves something they are not and maybe risking some other women to get into the same situation like me.
So please ! Keep your eyes and ears open about the „AC“ Den Ezelhoek. Tell others to watch out.
Don’t let anyone destroy our safe places in this fucked up world.
Solidarity
My deepest feelings of solidarity to you!
Violence is never a "private thing".
Stay strong. <3
Thank you for sharing
I hope you fell better now, and i hope that no one else gets in trouble by this people.
It is good to share those informations to keep our social networks secure for every one!
Stay strong, fight back!
Reaction and demands to the article: The sad Truth about the AC
We are a group of activists from Celle (northern germany) and take the article over the A.C: Den Ezelhoek and the raised accusations against Andi O. very seriously.
At the one hand, because we know the author personally and we consider her very well trustworthy.
But also because one cannot dismiss an accusation like that by portraying the affected woman as “hysterical shrew“ or pissed off ex (that's how Andi O.'s counterstatement sounds to us).
Again and again women who fight against oppression of men are defamed in that way. Too many female friends of us have suffered violence by men and weren't listened to, it happened too often in our scene, too many carry those scars for the rest of their lifes!
As ProFeminists we also think that the burden of proof does _not_ lie with the affected person.
To us the demand for proof is not only absurd but rude.
Some of the critics about the lifestyle of the people in the A.C. mentioned in the article are debatable to us.
We all act upon different maxims and we find it hard to judge from the outside what others define as their possible form of living.
But in no way are we willing to debate about dealing with homophob, sexist or misogynous persons.
Solidarity has to be withdrawn from these people!
Others have to be protected from these people!
Structures and their protectors must be attacked!
In the counterstatement of Andi O. are no comments about the accusations against him at all.
He only tries to paint a pictue of Momo as a dogmatic ideologist, the world and all men hating (basically) evil woman.
To proof his point he writes: she supposedly tried this with some Band before.
We do not believe this picture, quite the contrary!
We follow her article since its puplication two months ago and meanwhile we can find it on pages from germany up to canada.
But we can not understand why there has been no reaction/ no taking position from groups or projects in belgium at all.
Antisexism is part of our daily political work and definitely no private problem.
Momos article was surely not published to give Andi O. another chance to throw mud at her, but to point out this problem and especially this case in our scene.
We demand that projects and people in the surrounding of the A.C. Den Ezelhoek comment this case and take position!
(especially in the region Gent because of the post on indymedia Bruxsel: …„Ask around ghent and you will get the other side of the story.“)
Sdg. A group of activists from Celle