- At ikastola Armentia children under three families are studied. They reside in the Old Town of Vitoria-Gasteiz, in the homes managed by the Berakah Association of the Catholic Church, which has initiated a judicial eviction procedure. The Bizi housing network has called for a mobilisation against evictions on Friday.
“In recent weeks we have known that three families in our ikastola are at risk of being evicted. Seven students of the ikastola would be motivated by eviction and a total of nine minors and five adults,” explains the press release sent by the ikastola at the beginning. Ikastola stresses that one of the families has the deadline to voluntarily leave their home at the end of October, after having managed to delay the initial date by one month, questioning the same procedure: “The family has denounced that they have not had legal knowledge of the complaint they should receive, so they have lost the right to appeal the eviction sentence. The other two families have also been ordered to leave the house.”
Ikastola Armentia explained that families went to the Bizi housing network in Auzoa to ask for solidarity and that the network, among other things, organized a mobilization for Friday, 20 October: “From the ikastola Armentia we call to participate in the meeting and we want to convey to families its proximity”.
Catholic church evicting impoverished in Vitoria
On October 16, ARGIA published extensive information on these evictions, following a conversation with Fatima, a family member closest to the expulsion date. Fatima explained that the family currently has no alternative and that the two parents and the four younger children would stay on the street. He also told the colloquium that his children were doing a scholarship at the Armenian ikastola.
Fatima rigorously criticized the ways of making Berakah. He denounced that the association demands total obedience to hundreds of families participating in the Berakah program, that the threat and fear are widespread or that there is no transparency. He publicly states that “for no one else to live this”: “What I personally want is to leave the program without threats or abuses in order to live with dignity. But in Berakah there are many people in a very vulnerable situation, in a great situation of dependence.”
So Bedi recently collected in this video the testimony of Fatima.
