Portugal’s Public Security Police (PSP) denied on Tuesday that plainclothes officers had taken housing protesters to a police station in Porto in the early hours of Sunday. The force also rejected claims that protesters were detained on subsequent nights.
In a response to the Lusa news agency, an official source from the PSP’s National Directorate called the claim that plainclothes officers had taken protesters to a station “entirely false.” The force said the only people taken to police facilities were seven individuals arrested during the intervention, who were transported in a marked police vehicle by uniformed officers.
The PSP also denied that protesters had been taken to a station on later nights by either uniformed or plainclothes officers. Earlier on Tuesday, a source from the Porto Metropolitan Command had said it was unaware of plainclothes officers identifying and detaining protesters as they left Praça D. João I.
The Acampada do Porto pela Habitação movement had alleged on Monday night that plainclothes officers were identifying and detaining people leaving the square, then taking them to a station to identify people in photographs. Lawyer Ricardo Salazar, who provides legal support to the movement, said the organisation had received reports that protesters were being asked for identification and taken to the station. He also said it had been reported that photographs were shown there for identification.
Salazar added that the movement had received reports of similar identification checks at hospitals where people had gone for treatment, while stressing that the allegation had not been confirmed. He warned that, if it had happened, it would be serious. At a popular assembly on Monday, protesters were given guidance on what to do if detained or asked to identify themselves by officers, whether in plain clothes or uniform.
The dispute follows a police operation in the early hours of Sunday to disperse housing-rights encampments at Rossio in Lisbon and Praça D. João I in Porto. The PSP removed around 100 tents. The intervention involved police charges and objects being thrown, leaving more than two dozen protesters and officers injured. Seven people were arrested in Porto.
The encampments began on 10 October. Their demands include reversing the new rental law, ending demolitions and evictions without alternative housing, limiting property purchases by real-estate funds, increasing public housing, restoring vacant properties for residential use and setting rents at levels protesters describe as genuinely affordable.
Sources: Observador.