Former Minister of the PSD Jorge Moreira da Silva criticizes police intervention

O leader at the United Nations and former Minister of the PSD Jorge Moreira da Silva criticized today the police intervention this morning on protesters concentrated in Lisbon and Porto squares, in defense of the right to housing.

“ This police charge against peaceful protests by young people in Lisbon and Porto, in addition to being unjustifiable in the light of tolerance, empathy and human rights, is a tremendous error by decision-makers,” says the executive director of the United Nations Office of Project Services (UNOPS) and former vice president of the PSD, who played the party’s leadership with the current Prime Minister, Luís Montenegro, in 2022, in a rare publication on national policy made on social network X.

“This is what populism, radicalization and unbelief in politics are all about,” warns the former Environment Minister in the Social Democratic government between 2013 and 2015.

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.