200 professionals of Justice sign letter for the right to demonstration

Mais 200 professionals of the Justice of the whole country have already signed a letter open by the right of demonstration, reacting to the response of the authorities about the demonstrations in defense of housing held in various cities.

Lawyers, lawyers, law students and other justice professionals express “deep concern at the discourses and practices that, in recent times, have called into question the full exercise of the rights of assembly and demonstration and other fundamental freedoms and rights enshrined in the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic, namely the right to housing”.

As professionals of Justice, the subscribers consider it their “should defend effective respect for democratic freedoms” and demand “the clearance of responsibilities whenever there are violations of fundamental rights”.

The right to demonstrate – they point out – “is not a concession of political power, but a fundamental right whose exercise does not depend on authorisation”, and is also one of the fundamental achievements of the democratic regime established with 25 April 1974.

However, fundamental rights “cannot be emptied through restrictive interpretations or practices that, under the invocation of maintaining public order, compromise their effective exercise”, they note.

The signatories are also concerned about “the attempt to delegitimize the social challenge or to transform the exercise of fundamental rights into a public security problem”, recalling that “many of the social and labor achievements that today integrate our democratic heritage have resulted from the organization, mobilization and collective struggle”.

Emphasizing “the expressive adherence” to the letter – which remains open to signatures through the form https://forms.gle/kjE7jZVYQbLP5mrJ9 –, “registered in a short space of time”, law professionals note that it results from “existing concern in the sector towards discourses and practices that have called into question the full exercise of the rights of assembly and demonstration”.

Calling for a “collective reflection”, the subscribers recall that “a democracy is not only measured by the rights it proclaims, but also by the way it respects and guarantees them, especially when they are exercised to challenge decisions of the powers established”.

The Public Security Police (PSP) dispersed today at dawn the demonstrations for the right to housing, batonada and using rubber bullets and dogs, in two actions simultaneously in Lisbon and Porto, after more than two hours of tension and orders for the dispersion and withdrawal of tents assembled by protesters, who did not comply with them claiming that the right to demonstration is protected by the Constitution.

According to the PSP, in Lisbon there are seven wounded and 31 detained for disobedience, but, in a statement published on social networks, the Lisbon camp mentions dozens of wounded.

“ Early today, October 25, dozens of protesters were brutally assaulted by the intervention police. Of these, more than 20 went to the Hospital de São José and many others were assisted on site by the care team of the Campada ", reads in the publication of the Campada de Lisboa on social network Instagram.

In Porto, according to the PSP, the intervention caused eight wounded, a number that the Camping rises to 37.

The Camp of Porto – which began on the 10th – was the subject of a first police intervention, which caused nearly 40 wounded, in the early morning of the 15th, after that day they manifested about three thousand people in Praça D. João I.

In Lisbon, the Camp began on the 17th, after a demonstration called by CGTP and that brought together thousands of people.

The protesters set up tents in Praça D. Pedro IV and were the target of a first police intervention last Tuesday; on Saturday, and after a demonstration that gathered tens of thousands of people on Avenida da Liberdade, they reassembled tents.

The protesters demand the reversal of the new rental law, the end of demolitions and evictions without an alternative housing, a stop to the purchase of housing by real estate funds, the increase in public housing, the recovery of vacant buildings for housing purposes and ceilings “truely accessible” to income.

The demonstrations in defense of the right to housing will return to the squares of Lisbon, Porto and Faro in concentrations scheduled for today, hours after the police charges on protesters.