Today in lissabon: action against racism and police violence! - 16h rossio
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press release
websites in portugese:
https://plataformagueto.wordpress.com/
http://www.sosracismo.pt/Group Against The Police Brutality And The Institutional Racism Press Release 19th March 2015
Black Lives Matter | International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination The 21st March, on Saturday, marks the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, in memory of the Sharpeville Massacre, committed by the South-African Apartheid regime police, on the 21st March 1960.
On this same day, 20,000 black people were protesting pacifically against the Pass Law in Johannesburg, when the protest was violently repressed by the authorities, murdering 69 people and injuring another 180 people. Over half a century later, on the 5th February, in Lisbon, torture and racial hatred acts were committed by the police agents from the Alfragide Police Station, against residents from the Cova da Moura neighborhood, as a clear demonstration of how black unarmed people are still victims of the State violence and simultaneously a scapegoat of this society that not only does not acknowledge this tragedy, as its subsequent silent behaviors legitimate the sight of the poor and peripheral neighborhoods as territories excluded from the Rule of Law, whereby the police persistently shoots against defenseless people and beats them up. On this day of struggle, we recall some of the fatalities of the racism and police violence in Portugal: Elson Sanches (KUKU), Carlos Reis (PTB), Diogo Borges (Musso), José Carlos (Teti), Ângelo Semedo (Angoi), Manuel Pereira (Tony) e Nuno Rodrigues (Snake). We underline the injustice of the Portuguese Legal Framework, in which racism merely constitutes a misdemeanor. We also deeply lament the exoneration of the police officers who are perpetrators of such heinous crimes. In this context, residents from the peripheral neighborhoods of Lisbon, social movements and organizations, call a protest against the police violence and institutional racism, on the 21s March, from 4 PM, at Largo de São Domingos, which will include several interventions, on its essence, political and artistic ones. Because Black Lives Matter, we will proceed the struggle for justice and against all the structures that favor the racism and racial discrimination in Portugal. We claim: 1. The immediate ending of the Intervention Force police operations in the neighborhoods; 2. The criminalisation of the persistent torture and racial hatred acts, by enacting them as unlawful acts, public crimes acts and punishable within the Criminal Code; 3. The dismissal of the Commander of the police, as of the police officers involved in the torture acts that occurred in the Alragide Police Station, whereby there was an undeniable violation of the fundamental rights and freedoms of all the citizens living in this community.
Flyer of the event:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0NEcIZ14I3dUERFd1M1OFEzOFU/view?usp=sharing https://www.dropbox.com/s/lgm9oa86y61kwca/Cartazevento-21MAR2015.png?dl=0