Traders from the Warsaw shopping centre KDT are staging a violent protest against the forced closure of their workplace by the city government.
Retailers were supposed to leave the market-style shopping centre by today (21 July), but over a thousand sellers decided to stay and fight for their workplace.
A regular battle between traders and security and city guards is taking place at the KDT shopping centre. An executive officer from the city courts who entered the premises to take over the stalls, was pelted with stones, planks and bottles filled with water. In order to pave the way for him and throw the sellers out, security guards sprayed tear gas in the building.
The building is cordoned off by city guards and police. The sellers who are staying inside the building are calling for help through megaphones and the angry crowd gathered outside the KDT is screaming and trying to burst in. The protesters also blocked Marszalkowska, the main street in Warsaw city centre.
Traders have called the police, claiming that they were attacked by security guards but the city hall spokesman Tomasz Andryszczyk denies the allegations, explaining that it was the sellers who threatened city executives, security and city guards.
“They brought their own children to confront security guards. It is appalling,” said Andryszczyk.
KDT was to have been liquidated on 31 December 2008, when the lease contract expired, but sellers refuse to budge until their alternative location in the city’s western district of Wola, is fully built in 2011. A city court ruled that doing so is illegal and, on 21 July, city authorities decided to remove the traders from the building by force.
Warsaw City Hall is closing down the KDT market in order to build a new Centre for Modern Art on the terrain – on Plac Defilad under the Palace of Culture and Science – and increase green space. (mg/mmj)