The question of the Rog Factory is a political question. After Monday’s morning, it is in our interest, as well as in the interest of the municipality of Ljubljana, to calm the situation down. However, in contrast to the municipality, we are in full control of the situation. The Rog Factory is today a de facto autonomous area and we, the people of Rog, are also controlling the entry. Before Monday’s aggression by the security sent by the municipality, the entry was under the control of the security company Valina. Afzer Monday’s brutality, Valina is not welcome in the Rog Factory anymore. We will be protecting the entry by ourselves.
The municipality was the one who provoked the tensions by sending payed violent securities upon us. The mayor is personally choosing the violent means, we are only responding defensively. On Monday we proved that we are successful in doing so. It is of most perversion that the mayor, Zoran Janković, is now avoiding taking responsibility for the acts of his own securities. No one will carry out violence against us and we hope that Mr. Janković knows that. Every arbitrary step taken by the municipality made us stronger, and the farce that they performed on Monday forced us into full action. The movement is alive and well organized; it includes new and organized structures and is composed of more than one hundred individuals. We are prepared for new attempts of interventions into our community and we are convinced that we will ward them off successfully.
We are insisting on dialogue, which hasn’t yet been present, since the municipality is insisting on their ultimatum, which is demolishing and continuing with the project that is unacceptable for us. We see the possibility of dialogue only when the space for it will be open, and that is when the municipality will withdraw from the planned project. If they insist on the project, then everything has already been agreed upon and according to such an agreement, we cease to exist. The dialogue will begin when the municipality will acknowledge its partner in dialogue – the assembly of the autonomous Rog Factory users. This assembly is the only acceptable partner in dialogue, since it de facto controls the autonomous area of Rog Factory as well as has the power to normalize the tense situation.
Our demands are clear. The municipality should withdraw from the demolition plans and the project of the new Rog Centre. Without accepting this demand, which is of vital importance to us and from which we will not resign, anything is possible. We do want a cooperative relation with the municipality. The Rog Factory has an enormous potential and the flourishing of this potential is in public interest, and most importantly, in the interest of the city. Some contents, that the municipality is planning to implement in the new Rog Centre, are already being carried out by us and in the last few years we have been intensively including new users and opening new spaces. We suggest the municipality to rather focus on establishing contents in the ex-squats, such as the Cukrarna factory, which has been emptied almost two decades ago yet it still remains empty and in a critical condition. We will continue to defend the principles of our practice, which are making the Rog Factory a unique and an indispensable place of non-formal social, cultural and political production, which as such enables the cooperation of a wide range of users as well as experiments on the crossroads of activities which on first sight might seem foreign or incompatible among each other.
We demand for the municipality to come clear on how many bones they are still willing to break in order to appease to the mayor’s ego. How far are they willing to go to please the interest of the capital? We are calling for opening a common place for a true dialogue instead of escaping to violence. We hope that the municipality will see through that and avoid further use of force. You can find us in the autonomous Rog Factory. We are willing to talk to anyone, however, they cannot demand for us to agree to our own demise.
The assembly of the autonomous Rog Factory users