PSP does not know plainclothes police to identify and detain demonstrators

O Metropolitan Command of Porto da PSP today stated not to know the existence of plainclothes police to identify and arrest protesters outside of Praça D. João I, on Monday night, as denounced by the Porto Camp.

“I have no knowledge that this has happened. I have no report here” about this possible occurrence, he told Lusa source of Public Relations of PSP/Porto.

The same source also reported having no knowledge of any incidents in Praça D. João I, referring that the protesters remained camped “orderly” during the night.

Still according to the same source, early in the morning they remained in the place “about 20 tents”.

On Monday night, Ricardo Salazar, one of the lawyers who provides legal support to that movement, told journalists that “announcements came to the organization of the camp that they were being identified, or identification was being requested, and people were being arrested outside Dom João I Square and being taken to the police station”.

As he said, once at the police station “photographs were shown to identify people”.

“ It was also indicated that the same thing is supposedly happening in hospitals where people go to receive treatment. Plainclothes police are identifying people, which to be true is something quite serious and serious”, pointed out the lawyer.

For Ricardo Salazar, “if this is actually happening is a path that can reach political processes of intent and persecution of people, which is something that has not happened in Portugal since the New State”.

“We are now seeing that rights such as the demonstration are being called into question in an unheard of situation (...) there have already been similar demonstrations in the 50 years of our democracy, whether of firemen, policemen, JSD members or restaurant entrepreneurs, and there have never been police charges and there has never been the application of Article 11 of the 1974 Act′′, explained.

And he continued: “What we are seeing right now is that we are crossing all the limits of healthy coexistence between people and government and now we are witnessing an escalation of violence that must be stopped because this undermines our rule of law.”.

In the last popular assembly it was explained to protesters how to act in the event of arrest and to be asked to identify or identify undercover agents.

In the early hours of Sunday, PSP dispersed the camped by the right to housing in Rossio, in Lisbon, and in Praça D. João I, in Porto, removing about 100 tents. The intervention culminated in police charges and throwing objects, causing more than two dozen wounded between demonstrators and police.

In Porto, the intervention of PSP ended with seven detainees.

In the camps, which began on October 10 in Porto, protestors 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.