Camps return today with concentrations in Lisbon and Porto

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

On the social network Instagram, the Lisbon Camp calls the protest “More houses, less staff!” for today, at 5:00 pm, in Praça D. Pedro IV, where at the first hours of the day a police charge, the batonada and using rubber bullets and dogs, made several wounded and arrests.

“Join us!”, calls for the summons, ensuring that “campada survived and resisted” and that “crude police violence [...] will not be tolerated”.

In the same publication, the Camp of Lisbon denounces the “state violence” commanded by the Government, “used to intimidate, silence, demobilize the people who want to fight for their rights”.

The police intervention on protesters who concentrated in the squares of Lisbon and Porto this morning “is not an isolated excess, it is the repression of a state that protects property while attacking those who fight for the right to housing”, denounces, warning that “fascism” is spreading.

“ Every batonada, every organization, every threat, every solidarity. Fear will not win”, says the Campada de Lisboa.

In Porto, Catarina dos Santos, spokesman for the Campada, left this morning, in statements to journalists after the police intervention, the guarantee that they would return to focus, as usual, at 7:00: “No one walks from the square until the claims are heard.”

In a publication published on Instagram, with photographs and videos of the police load on protesters gathered in Praça D. João I, the Porto Camp denounces what it considers to be “the abusive use of force”, which “was not an error of interpretation of the law, it was a conscious choice of security forces”.

Following the Lisbon commitment, it is also stated in Porto: “For every batonada, more mutual support and more organization. This is not over.”

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, and also according to the PSP, the intervention caused eight wounded, a number that the Campeda rises to 37, of which seven were in serious condition.

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, following a demonstration called by the CGTP trade union center and which 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. This Saturday, and after a demonstration that gathered tens of thousands of people on Liberty Avenue, they set up tents again.

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 new rental law, passed in general in the Assembly of the Republic (with the vote in favour of PSD, IL and CDS-PP and the abstention of Aquida), introduces more flexible contracts and faster evictions.