Police charged housing protesters in Lisbon and Porto early on Sunday, clearing two city-centre encampments in operations that organisers say left dozens injured, including some people with serious injuries.
Thirty-one were arrested — 25 in Lisbon and six in Porto. All have been released this morning and are due to appear in court tomorrow.
The PSP put the number of injured at 11. Protest organisers reported a substantially higher toll: 37 injured in Porto, seven of them seriously, and more than 20 people taken to hospital in Lisbon, with others treated at the scene.
The simultaneous operations followed hours of peaceful protest at Rossio in Lisbon and Praça D. João I in Porto, according to reports broadcast by SIC.
Police said the gatherings should have ended at 12.30am and that protesters had repeatedly ignored orders to disperse.
Officers from the Special Police Unit moved in at around 2am, after the clocks had gone back for winter time.
At Rossio, officers struck protesters with batons amid scenes of confrontation. Firecrackers were set off and cries of “it smells like dictatorship” could be heard.
By around 2.10am, the square had been emptied, with protesters dispersed into surrounding streets.
In Porto, the intervention lasted little more than 10 minutes as police advanced towards the tents and dismantled the encampment.
“How is someone who is asleep resisting?”
João Veloso, spokesman for the Lisbon Acampada movement, condemned the police response as disproportionate and disputed suggestions that those detained had been resisting officers.
Speaking to SIC, he accused police of arresting people while they slept.
“How is someone who is asleep resisting?” he asked.
Veloso alleged that officers had inflicted head injuries and broken arms, knocked people to the ground and pursued protesters through central Lisbon for hours.
In a separate statement, Acampada Lisboa alleged that police used dogs and rubber bullets during those pursuits. It accused the force of seeking to corner and intimidate demonstrators, rather than simply remove the tents from Rossio.
Those allegations go beyond the account given by the PSP, which defended its intervention as necessary to enforce the end of the gatherings and remove unauthorised camping structures.
Police cite ignored dispersal orders
PSP spokesman Sérgio Soares told SIC that officers had first sought to resolve the situation through dialogue and mediation.
“There were more than two hours of attempted dialogue,” he said, arguing that protesters’ refusal to comply had required a more forceful intervention in both cities.
Soares said the restrictions concerned both the permitted duration of the protests and camping structures that had not been properly authorised.
Police seized 171 tents and camping structures: 117 in Lisbon and 54 in Porto.
The PSP also reported seizing a pyrotechnic device from one person arrested in Porto, along with several paint cans. Soares said paint cans had been thrown at officers in the city.
Organisers, meanwhile, challenged both the scale of force used and the police account of its consequences, with the two sides reporting sharply different injury figures following the overnight clearances.
source material: SIC Notícias/ Lusa