Former politicians, musicians and lawyers from across Portugal have filed a criminal complaint against the leader of the far-right Chega party over “false or biased” statements made after a fatal police shooting of a black man.
For the past week, Portugal has been reeling from the death of Odair Moniz, a 43-year-old chef originally from Cape Verde. An official police statement initially said Moniz had fled, crashed a car and brandished a knife before an officer opened fire.
The officer later told investigators there had been no knife involved, police sources told several Portuguese media. The news agency AFP, citing Portuguese media, said the officer had since been charged with manslaughter.
The killing sparked unrest in several municipalities on the outskirts of Lisbon last week, leading to the torching of more than a dozen cars and the arrests of 16 people. Seven people were injured.
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, whose party finished third, quadrupling its seat count, in the most recent Portuguese elections.
Another Chega lawmaker, Pedro Pinto, told the broadcaster RTP: “If the security forces shot more to kill, the country would have more order.”
A party adviser thanked the officer on social media in a now-deleted post that referred to one less “criminal” on the streets, despite there being no evidence to back this claim.
The comments were swiftly criticised. “We thought this is the last straw,” said Miguel Prata Roque, a professor of constitutional law. “This party, and these specific individuals, they are trying to instigate the police against citizens and trying to disseminate violence and hatred.”
He was among the 40 or so people who on Monday lodged a criminal complaint against the three members of Chega. The accusations include one specifically directed at Ventura for “disseminating false or biased news likely to cause alarm or unrest among the population”.
Those behind the complaint also included Francisca Van Dunem, a former minister of justice. “A limit has been reached,” she said in a statement to the Diário de Notícias newspaper. “No democrat can fail to be outraged by these statements.”
A version of the complaint, which makes use of a clause in Portuguese law that allows individuals to bring forward claims, was posted online so that members of the public could sign it.
“We started collecting signatures on Friday and we have already collected 125,000 signatures,” Prata Roque said. At one point the rate surged to as high as three a second, he added.
Portugal’s public prosecutor confirmed to several media last week that it had opened an investigation into the comments made by members of Chega. The prosecutor did not offer further details or specify the nature of the accusations.
On Saturday, as Moniz was remembered as a “law-abiding, peaceful working person” by Cape Verde’s ambassador to Portugal, Eurico Correia Monteiro, thousands of people took to a main avenue in Lisbon to protest against police violence. Demonstrators waved signs that read “Stop killing us” and “Who to call when the killer is police?”.
Last year a UN committee expressed concern over reports of excessive force being used by police in Portugal, citing information that suggested it continued to be a “deep-rooted practice against people of African descent”.
The route for Saturday’s protest had to be altered in order to avoid clashes with the 200 Chega supporters who turned up for a counter-rallybacking the police.
Ventura and Pinto did not respond to a request for comment. Late last week, the Chega leader told reporters that he saw it as “very negative” that political debate was ending up in courts.
