In the complaint, reported by Expresso and consulted by Lusa, Garcia Pereira asks Amadeu Guerra to proceed with the appropriate procedure to extinguish Chega.
He also asks for a criminal inquiry to be opened against the party’s president, André Ventura, and other leaders, for incitement to hatred, and for judicial and administrative measures to be taken to urgently remove posters with messages of “incitement to hatred and violence against groups of citizens”.
In his arguments, the lawyer recalls that the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic does not allow “racist organisations or those that espouse fascist ideology” and lists episodes of conduct by Chega members that, he says, “represent the raising to an (even) higher level of systematic behaviour that violates those essential democratic principles”.
The lawyer and university professor, among other examples, recalls the recent words of André Ventura, when he argued that Portugal needs “three Salazars”, and the posters with messages referring to Bangladesh and the gypsy community.
Garcia Pereira also refers to the Chega leader’s social media posts against the Roma, when he speaks of this community as “people who “think they have rights and privileges” but don’t abide by the law”.
The author of the complaint also warns of a “trivialisation of the most vulgar insults and hate speech” against “political opponents and certain communities”, recalling when the parliamentary leader of Chega, Pedro Pinto, defended, on the death of Odair Moniz, that “if the police shot to kill, the country would be in order”.
António Garcia Pereira considers it clear that Ventura, as well as Rita Matias, Pedro Pinto or Pedro Frazão, have “defamed groups of people because of their race, colour, ethnic or geographical origin and religion, inciting and encouraging discrimination, hatred and even violence against such groups”.
“In fact, there have been several cases of consummate and barbaric attacks on such citizens, in the Algarve, Porto and Greater Lisbon, causing them all to feel strong fear and constraint in their freedom of action (namely, to go out into the street and go to the café, to their children’s school or to the supermarket),” reads the complaint.
For Garcia Pereira, no conception of freedom of expression “can justify this type of conduct” and these behaviours are examples of “very serious and legally inadmissible violations, both of fundamental principles of the democratic rule of law and of the fundamental rights, freedoms and guarantees of the citizens concerned”.
He believes that the Public Prosecutor’s Office “has the legitimacy and obligation to promote criminal proceedings to investigate and establish the facts”, recalling that it is up to this body “to exercise criminal action guided by the principle of legality and to defend democratic legality”.
“Which have been seriously, maliciously, ostentatiously and repeatedly violated by the behaviour of the Chega party and its aforementioned president and top leader, André Ventura,” concludes the lawyer.
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