Shorouk Express
On 19 December, an operation by the Polícia de Segurança Pública (PSP, Portugal’s police force) provoked a wave of outrage in Portugal. When a large number of individuals on Rua do Benformoso in Lisbon were forced against the wall and searched, Images of the operation went viral on social networks.
Several dozen men can be seen in the images, with their hands in the air. On the opposite side of the street, a row of police vans. To put it politely, all the men in question have the same physical characteristics. The operation lasted two hours and was part of a series of “security” interventions by the government.
The scene took place in a well-known Lisbon neighbourhood, Martim-Moniz, or Mouraria, where many people of Indian origin tend to reside. The neighbourhood “takes its name from the area granted to the Moors, following their defeat by the Christian Reconquista in 1147”, writes Courrier International, quoting the LUSA agency. In February 2024 (when the article was published) “an estimated 15,000 Muslims, mostly from the Indian subcontinent, were living and working there, sometimes in very precarious conditions”.
The scene produced an immediate and coordinated response from civil society, leading to demonstration that saw at least 15 thousand people (50,000 according to SIC noticias) marching in Martim Moniz, as Sonia Martínez reports in the Spanish portal El Salto.
The protesters‘ slogan “Não nos encostem à parede” (’Don’t put us against the wall’) spread through social networks and via an instagram account. Cultural figures, journalists and intellectuals, as well as migrant communities and anti-racist associations, took part in the demonstration.
The demonstration was held in the name of “all the people who live and work in Portugal”, so that all could be “treated with dignity”. This specific police operation, the promoters added, “was not an isolated case. Such operations occur regularly in other suburbs of Lisbon and the country at large”.
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In the name of “citizens’ security”, Portugal’s prime minister, the conservative Luís Montenegro, welcomed the police operation. As El Salto explains: “for months now, the far right, with the political party Chega as its main exponent, has been focusing on Martim Moniz, alarming the public about migrants living and circulating in the area, producing a sensationalist, xenophobic and racist discourse. In a clear shift to the far right, the Montenegro government has appropriated this discourse by implementing security mechanisms to criminalise migrant workers”.
This is not the first time that Chega has organised demonstrations in the neighbourhood against the “Islamisation of Europe”.
While the Mouraria neighbourhood is indeed known as an area of drug dealing and other forms of trafficking, this is not related to the presence of migrants, explains a local Socialist Party councillor Miguel Coelho, quoted in Público. Coelho considers the police operation “unacceptable”, due to its “framing, the way in which a social and ethnic group was targeted, and its duration”.
The Mouraria incident is just the latest in a long line of events that highlight an issue that concerns all of Europe: police violence, especially in specific territories, the urban “peripheries” where a mix of social, territorial and housing inequalities have concentrated and solidified.
Parallel to this, we are witnessing the gentrification of the historic centres, something that Lisbon has experienced more rapidly and violently than many other European cities. “In the space of a decade, housing prices in Lisbon have risen dramatically, with a 120 percent increase between 2012 and 2022, mainly due to low levels of investment in the sector and the absence of public policies to curb speculation. Rental costs have also risen significantly, with a 30 percent increase over the past five years. At the same time, wages have remained almost static, reducing the purchasing power of the population,” writes urban planning professor Agostino Petrillo in Terzo Giornale, the journal of the Foundation for Social Criticism (Fondazione per la critica sociale).
On Mediapart back in April, for the 50th anniversary of the Carnation Revolution (1974-2024), journalist Mickaël Correia talked with several activists on the issue of housing specifically. Correia quotes António Brito Guterres of Vida Justa, a movement that brings together more than 80 organisations and collectives demanding a decent life, especially for the inhabitants of the poorest neighbourhoods. Guterres, a researcher in urban studies, explains that “during the Carnation Revolution, Lisbon was a post-colonial city. But the racial segregation caused by the housing crisis is turning our capital into a colonial metropolis”.
The protests in Portugal
The 11 January demonstration in Lisbon emerged from a different protest, which took place on 26 October and was organised by Vida Justa. The earlier protest was called following the death of Odair Moniz, a 43-year-old Cape Verdean father of three and bar manager who had lived in Portugal for more than two decades. Moniz was fatally wounded on 21 October 2024 during a police operation.
This death echoes others, like Ramy Elgaml or Nahel Merzouk, in other urban peripheries, in other countries. Initially, the police claimed that Moniz had refused to comply with an identity check and had attacked the officers with a knife. This version was disproved by video footage and an investigation was opened.
In the days following Moniz’s death, the neighbourhood of Amadora, where he lived, was the scene of clashes between residents and police forces. “Despite the uncertainty over the circumstances of the shooting, the leader of the far-right, anti-immigrant Chega party, André Ventura, was quick to comment, urging people to thank the police for their actions. The officer who shot Moniz should be ‘decorated, not indicted,’ said Ventura,” Ashifa Kassam writes in the Guardian.
In 2023, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination expressed concern about “information that indicated that the excessive use of force by police officials continued and was a deep-rooted practice against people of African descent”.
Precisely how many people have died at the hands of the police in Portugal? In an investigation by the European Data Journalism Network, in which Voxeurop participated, Pedro Miguel Santos of Divergente writes “The reports from 1996 to 2023 report that, during this 28 year period, the Portuguese security forces and services killed 80 people. The Public Security Police (the Portuguese civil police force, PSP) killed 49 people, the National Republican Guard (the Portuguese gendarmerie, GNR) killed 30 and the National Immigration and Border Service (SEF) — now dissolved — killed one. The 1990s and 2000s were the deadliest decades; 2003 marked the peak with six deaths recorded. There is no data relating to deaths caused by other forces, such as the Portuguese Criminal Investigation Police (PJ) or the Maritime Police (PM)”.
However, Santos continues, these numbers are inconsistent, as is the methodology used: “The fact is that the State doesn’t know, unequivocally, how many of its officers die, nor does it know how many of its citizens it kills. […] Fifty years on from the 25 April Carnation Revolution, such a brazen lack of transparency is intolerable”.
