Free calls for UN and Council of Europe intervention after police charges

O Free today called on the United Nations (UN) and the Council of Europe to make public statements on police charges in protests for housing in Portugal and to contact national governments and authorities.

This call is made in two letters, published by the party, one addressed to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, and the second to the Council of Europe's Commissioner for Human Rights, Michael O'Flaherty.

In the exhibitions, the spokespersons of Livre Isabel Mendes Lopes and Jorge Pinto ask that these two entities intervene “through a public pronunciation of the situation in Portugal and a contact with the Government and national authorities to stop using the disproportionate force against peaceful demonstrators”.

In the letter addressed to the UN, the party asks the special rapporteurs to “consider sending to the Portuguese State a communication on these facts”, expressing “the full availability to provide additional information, including through testimony and sharing of video and images records”.

Already in the presentation to the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe, the party recalls that Michael O’Flaherty will travel to Portugal on November 11, to participate in the Web Summit, requesting a meeting at the Assembly of the Republic, “with Parliamentary groups and civil society organizations, on the demonstrations and actions of the Government and PSP”.

In the two exhibitions, Livre argues that peaceful protests are at stake that have been the target of police charges resulting in several injuries, also referring to the decision known today of the Lisbon Administrative Court, which considered that the limit of 00:30 for demonstrations is not “absolute and automatic”, authorizing a protester to remain at dawn in Rossio, in Lisbon, with a tent.

The party believes that several rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights are being violated, of which Portugal is State Party, namely “the right to freedom of peaceful assembly”, “the right to freedom of expression”, “the prohibition of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment through the repeated, disproportionate and assumed extemporaneous use of force” and “the right to freedom and personal security”.

For the Free, there are also “serious violations of the European Convention on Human Rights”.

PSP dispersed on Sunday mornings the camped by the right to housing in Rossio, in Lisbon, and in Praça D. João I, in Porto, removing about 100 tents, intervention that culminated in police loads and throwing objects, causing more than two dozen wounded between protesters and police.

The police action motivated a request for clarification from the President of the Republic to the Government and the Ombudsman, and the announcement of a criminal complaint by a lawyer for abuse of power against the Minister of the Internal Administration and the Director of the PSP.

In the camps, which began on October 10th, protesters demand the reversal of the new rental law, the end of demolitions and evictions without housing alternative, a brake on housing purchase by real estate funds, the increase in public housing, the recovery of vacant buildings for housing purposes and “truely accessible” ceilings to income.