There was a moment in Odair Moniz’s life when everything pushed him towards the whirlwind of violence. He became involved in drug trafficking, stole, drove without a license and ended up in jail. But that life was left behind. When he was shot by police on Monday in the Cova da Moura neighborhood, in the Lisbon metropolitan area, he was a waiter who had had his third child two years ago and had reintegrated into society. He had no pending accounts with the justice system or the police. And, in their testimonies, the neighbors praise his affability and bonhomie.
The incident that caused the death of Odair Moniz, 43, is more confusing as the hours go by. If the Public Security Police (PSP) released an initial statement stating that the man resisted the officers and showed a knife, it was the statements of the police officer who shot him that have destroyed this version by denying that he was carrying a knife. knife The cook was driving his car through Cova da Moura, a neighborhood where a large community of Cape Verdean immigrants like Moniz himself resides, when he began to be followed by a police patrol, which considered his driving suspicious.
The neighbor ignored the signs and began to flee in which he collided with some vehicles until he finally stopped and got out of the car. At that moment, according to the police, a physical confrontation occurred and one of the agents shot three times: once in the air and twice at Moniz, who arrived alive at the San Francisco Javier hospital, where he died shortly after.
After learning of the death, there were some incidents in the Zambujal neighborhood, where Moniz lived, with container fires, but the violence grew from Tuesday night and spread to other towns in the Lisbon metropolitan area. That night two buses and several cars burned. In addition, the police arrested three people. Two police officers and two passengers suffered minor injuries.
The disturbances were repeated on Wednesday night in five locations, although they were isolated incidents and carried out by a few people, who burned containers and some cars. With the arrests in the last few hours, there are already 13 people arrested by the police. The riots have caused three injuries, one of them seriously. He is the driver of a bus that burned in a neighborhood of Loures, in the metropolitan area, who is admitted to the burn unit of the Santa María hospital, in Lisbon. The police deployment has been growing every night and the prime minister, the conservative Luís Montenegro, warned that the authorities will toughen the police response: “We will take all necessary measures so that the right to demonstrate does not collide with the right to peace, to the public order and tranquility in people’s mobility.”
This Thursday, Montenegro will chair a meeting at the São Bento Palace with mayors of Greater Lisbon, one of the most populated areas in the country and which includes nine municipalities, to discuss solutions to stop violence. One of the leaders of the riots assured in an interview with the SIC network that it had gotten out of hand and was already out of his control.
At a press conference in Lisbon, the deputy national director of the Public Security Police, Pedro Gouveia, noted that they are tracking social media to identify people who are inciting violence. Gouveia denied that the agents were trying to enter the Zambujal building where the deceased lived, as claimed by the family, who has filed a complaint, according to their lawyer Catarina Morais. The entrance door to the apartment shows that it suffered violent blows and has part of the frames torn off. Some relatives of the victim claim that they were beaten by police who invaded the home the day after Moniz’s death.
The episode provoked a bitter debate on Wednesday in the Assembly of the Republic, especially harsh between the leader of the far-right Chega party, André Ventura, and the representatives of the left, at their ideological antipodes when it came to analyzing the riots. Meanwhile, the coordinator of the Left Bloc, Mariana Mortágua, criticized that in these neighborhoods “the State only enters armed and with a helmet, searches before asking the name, knocks before ringing the doorbell and shoots without it being necessary.” Ventura demanded a strong hand from the Government and praised without hesitation the work of the security forces. “Any incident with a minority in Portugal gives rise to the blaming of the police,” he rebuked, before reading messages on camera inciting vandalism in the center of Lisbon. “These are not victims, they are bandits who are destroying our country,” he roared amidst the enthusiasm of his bench, which was on its feet.
The riots have even provoked a reaction from the Prime Minister of Cape Verde, Ulisses Correia e Silva, who showed his confidence in Portuguese justice to clarify the death of Odair Moniz and criticized the attacks directed at the Cape Verdean community, the third largest among the nationalities of foreigners residing in Portugal with just over 35,000 people from the African archipelago that was once a Portuguese colony.