Dear Commissioner,
I address Your Excellency as a Portuguese and European citizen, with the respect owed to your mandate and with the frankness of someone who has devoted part of his life to serving communities and to defending human dignity.
I had the honour of being part of the first mission of the European Solidarity Corps, a milestone in the European Union’s commitment to solidarity. Since then I have worked on the ground, in Portugal and abroad, alongside people who rarely have a voice. It was this work of listening, presence and commitment that consolidated my conviction that public power is legitimate only when it serves and protects, above all the most vulnerable.
My active citizenship has already been publicly recognised. I was distinguished as U.Porto Volunteer 2017/18 and I received the Active Citizenship Award 2019, in the humanitarian and solidarity category, from the University of Porto, presented by the President of the Republic. I mention this so that it is understood where I speak from: from someone who believes in civic participation and practises it.
I also write as someone who knows, from personal experience, what abuses of power are. I do not say this lightly, nor in order to place myself at the centre of this letter. Out of discretion, and out of respect for third parties, I do not go into details here. But that experience taught me to recognise a pattern: force that ceases to be a last resort and becomes an instrument of intimidation, authority that is confused with impunity, the silence of institutions that becomes the first form of legitimation.
In the early hours of Sunday, 25 October 2026, the PSP (Public Security Police), with the Intervention Corps and the Special Police Unit, dismantled the protest camps for the right to housing at Rossio, in Lisbon, and at Praça D. João I, in Porto, after about three hours of warnings to remove approximately 200 tents. According to the PSP, 31 people were detained for disobedience (25 in Lisbon and 6 in Porto) and made formal suspects (arguidos). The PSP began by announcing 11 injured and revised the figure to 33, after Lisbon hospitals confirmed 27 people treated, admitting that the total may fall short of reality. The protest organisation in Porto speaks of 37 injured, seven of them seriously.
The collectives organising the protests describe indiscriminate violence against peaceful protesters, including people who were sleeping, and denounce the use of batons, dogs and rubber bullets. According to the organisation, the eviction record (auto de despejo) was not presented at the time of the operation. The PSP justifies the intervention by the occupation of public space with unauthorised structures and by the failure to comply with orders to leave; the press also reports objects being thrown at officers in Lisbon.
It was not an isolated episode. On 15 October, in Porto, the movement reported 39 injured in a similar intervention, and Amnesty International Portugal called for an independent and effective investigation, expressing concern at the use of excessive force. On 20 October, 55 people were detained in Lisbon for disobedience. On 21 October, almost 900 people, mostly from the cultural sector, had already signed an open letter against the violence at these protests. The repetition is what concerns me most.
It is not for me, and it is not possible from the outside, to determine the truth of each account. That is a matter for an independent assessment. But, taken as a whole, it is enough to justify that such an assessment take place.
I do not need to be a protester in this specific cause to claim the right to the fundamental freedoms at stake here. I claim it precisely because I know, from personal experience, what these violations are. The rights to assemble, to demonstrate and to physical integrity do not belong to a cause, nor to those who defend it: they belong to everyone, and it is when they are violated against those who protest, for whatever reason, that one realises how much they are worth to the rest.
I acknowledge that public space must be regulated, that public order is an important good and that security forces work under real pressure. I also acknowledge that a camp may be unlawful. But the European Convention on Human Rights protects freedom of peaceful assembly (Article 11), the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic enshrines the right to assemble and to demonstrate (Article 45) and limits police measures to what is strictly necessary (Article 272). The unlawfulness of an occupation does not dispense with the necessity, suitability and proportionality of the response, still less does it legitimise violence against peaceful people.
The protest concerned one of the most pressing social issues in the country, access to housing, and was carried out largely by young people. These are matters to which Your Excellency’s mandate has given priority attention: socio-economic rights, youth, and those who defend rights in public space.
I know that Your Excellency’s mandate does not include the examination of individual complaints, and that is not what I ask. I respectfully ask that these facts be taken into account in the monitoring and dialogue activities of your Office with the Portuguese authorities, namely as regards an independent and prompt investigation of the allegations of excessive use of force against peaceful protesters, the public clarification of the conditions in which the eviction orders were carried out, including the alleged failure to present the corresponding record (auto), and the effective guarantee of the right to peaceful assembly.
Citizens’ trust in European institutions depends on the capacity to give voice to concerns such as this one. I hope that the Europe in which I believed when I joined the European Solidarity Corps continues to be the Europe that I recognise.
Yours sincerely,
José Tiago de Sousa
Portuguese and European citizen
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