Purity says police “bumped by the government” and asks for insurance action

O coordinator of the Left Block today said that this morning’s police intervention on protesters for housing happened “at the behest of the Government” and considered that the President of the Republic should comment on what happened.

“Luís Montenegro responded to the great, democratic and peaceful force of the streets with police violence, beating, chasing, cornering. All our solidarity with those who were attacked and persecuted this morning just for having expressed themselves peacefully”, said José Manuel Pureza.

At the end of the Joint Future Summit, promoted by the European Left Alliance in Lisbon, the former bloquist deputy considered that “the police struck at the behest of the Government of Luís Montenegro”.

“A government so strong to have hit, so in shock with the Constitution, to make cold repression its only response to the uncontrolled housing crisis. Such a government is a gulf for democracy. And I want to say it clearly. This government does not represent the Portuguese people”, he criticized.

In this speech, the BE leader appealed to the President of the Republic to comment on what happened, as well as parties and unions.

Purity also considered that “what brings together [Luís] Montenegro, [André] Ventura, Leitão [Amaro] and that lord of Joane [Nuno Melo] who is more concerned with the accent of people than with the price of the house is liberal fanaticism, [...] the cruel idea that the profit of a speculator is worth more than the right to have a roof” and accused them of being “actively working for those who profit from the housing crisis.”.

The coordinator of BE considered that “what the streets yesterday [Saturday] said with an untamed force was that the government will not be able to enforce its law on unlimited rents and easy evictions and that it will have the same fate as the work package” and argued that you cannot “send one millimeter of the struggle for housing” until that happens.

“ The crowd that fills the streets from north to south is showing three things to Montenegro: the fate of the law of evictions is the drawer from which it should never have left, the best Montenegro has to do is save itself from it and remove it immediately, and this is even the time to impose limits, starting with rents and ending in the lack of shame of a government that governs for those who profit from the housing crisis and have hit those who protest peacefully,” he said.

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.