Portuguese police clash with housing protesters, arrest 13

• Police stormed protest camps in Lisbon and Porto, arresting 13 people and injuring dozens during clashes over Portugal’s housing crisis.
• Protesters said police used batons and dogs, while police said some demonstrators threw bottles and paint and refused orders to disperse.
• Activists oppose plans to ease evictions and remove rent caps on new leases, warning they will raise housing costs and make tenants more vulnerable.

LISBON – Riot police with dogs stormed protest camps in Lisbon and Porto early on Nov 1, charging demonstrators with batons, arresting 13 people and leaving dozens injured in the latest confrontation over Portugal’s housing crisis.

Clashes quickly broke out as dozens of officers moved in on an encampment in Lisbon’s Rossio Square and a smaller camp in Porto’s Dom Joao I Square at around 4.30am local time.

Protesters shouted “smells like a dictatorship”, while the police said some hurled bottles and paint at officers as they tried to take down the tents.

The police said in a statement that six people were arrested in Lisbon and seven in Porto for refusing orders to disperse. It said 13 police were injured in the process, with eight taken to hospital.

In Porto, the police said three plain-clothes officers monitoring the protesters were assaulted after being spotted by a group.

One of the officers displayed his firearm as a deterrent, police said.

An unspecified number of civilians were also injured during the operation, which was carried out “with rigour, balance and respect for citizens’ rights”, the statement read.

Porto protest organisers said 38 people were injured, including three seriously, while Lisbon organisers reported more than 30 injured.

Activist group Acampada Lisboa said more than 30 protesters were injured, including 10 who required hospital treatment, and called a fresh rally in the capital on the afternoon of Nov 1 to protest against the police operation.

“We will not be silenced,” it said in a statement posted on social media, alongside photographs of protesters with bruises or bleeding from injuries it blamed on “police violence”.

Some protesters carried red carnations, a symbol of Portugal’s 1974 revolution, evoking the peaceful military-led uprising that ended nearly five decades of dictatorship.

Police said they seized 69 tents in Lisbon and 30 in Porto.

The camps had been set up late on Oct 31 after peaceful marches through the two cities against soaring housing costs.

Officers have repeatedly dismantled encampments that have sprung up across Lisbon and Porto in recent weeks.

‘Dark night’

After police cleared protest camps in the two cities last weekend, Amnesty International said it was “deeply concerned by the excessive and disproportionate use of force by police”.

A lawyer representing protesters at Lisbon’s housing camps, Ricardo Sa Fernandes, said on Nov 1 he would file a criminal complaint against Interior Minister Luis Neves and the national police chief for abuse of power.

“This is a dark night in the history of Portuguese democracy. This is absolutely intolerable and has crossed all limits,” he told reporters outside a police station in Lisbon where some of those detained were taken.

Neves has defended the police response to the protests, insisting that the encampments must end and warning that officers will use force when necessary to restore public order.

“I feel deep sadness about what happened again last night. Nobody takes any pleasure in seeing this outcome,” he said on Nov 1.

Protesters want the minority centre-right government to abandon plans to ease evictions and remove rent caps on new leases, warning the measures would push up housing costs and leave tenants more vulnerable.

Prime Minister Luis Montenegro has acknowledged that property prices have doubled in a decade, but blames the crisis on previous left-wing governments for failing to build enough homes and pursuing what he calls an overly permissive migration policy.

Portuguese protesters have taken inspiration from a similar movement in neighbouring Spain, where tents have been set up in central Madrid and other cities for weeks. AFP