“No police operation in Portugal is aimed at a specific community”
A week after the ‘controversial police operation’ in Martim Moniz, criticism shows little sign of letting up – to the extent that prime minister Luís Montenegro has admitted to being “astonished”.
Taking advantage of today’s swearing in ceremony for new heads of internal security, the head of Portugal’s minority social democrat government said there is no police operation in Portugal aimed at a specific community. For this reason, he is both “astonished and very perplexed” by the continuing fallout.
At a point where many may have decided to ‘take the heat out of the situation by saying no more’, Mr Montenegro weighed in, saying he considers the arguments he has heard to be “unusual and unjustified”.
Last Thursday’s operation was aimed at everyone present in Martim Moniz, including “several Portuguese people”.
“It is incorrect, it is indefensible and improper to throw this stone at the debate”, he said – referring to the constant allusions to police hounding South Asian immigrants specifically.
Indeed, the prime minister threw back at his critics the accusations that they have been levelling at him: that he lives in a different reality.
The reality of Rua do Benformoso/ Martim Moniz, he stressed, is that it has a recent history of repeated crime. Thus, “preventive actions of a police nature” cannot be labelled “an expression of extremist governance” (as PS secretary general Pedro Nuno Santos has railed). The idea is to “guarantee people’s peace of mind, to prevent criminal behaviour and to guarantee the full integration of our immigrants”, the PM stressed.
Also in defence of the country’s police forces, Mr Montenegro said that “security is neither left-wing nor right-wing”, but a good that “should be preserved” – rejecting the extremist and even “lyrical” speeches that have peppered the media.
The executive will always be ‘on the side’ of the security forces, the PM assured, rejecting the idea that it wants to instrumentalise them.
He ended his intervention saying once again that Portugal “is one of the safest countries in the world”, but “it is not enough to say it to keep it that way”.
Source material: Expresso
