Hate speech against people with disabilities exists in Portugal, although it rarely assumes explicit forms, manifesting itself primarily through infantilization, charity, belittling, and dehumanization, warn experts and human rights defenders.
On the occasion of the International Day for Countering Hate Speech, marked on Wednesday, researchers and leaders in the field of disability argue that prejudices remain deeply rooted in Portuguese society and create the conditions for discrimination, exclusion, and violence against this group.
The coordinator of the Observatory on Disability and Human Rights, Paula Campos Pinto, considers it possible to affirm that hate speech directed at people with disabilities exists, although it is often not recognized as such.
According to the researcher, these discourses are based on ideas that devalue the competence, worth, and capacity for participation of people with disabilities, a phenomenon known as ableism.
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As an example, she recalled episodes that occurred in political debates, where members of parliament sought to devalue interventions by people with disabilities or presented inclusion measures as privileges granted to one group at the expense of other citizens.
“They look at people with disabilities as children of a lesser God, second-class citizens,” she stated.
Researcher Fernando Fontes also maintains that prejudice against people with disabilities exists and constitutes one of the main barriers to their social inclusion. In his view, hate speech does not necessarily translate into explicit calls for violence, but rather into language and attitudes that inferiorize and dehumanize.
“It emerges above all in the mobilization of language that dehumanizes people with disabilities and inferiorizes them compared to people without disabilities,” he stated.
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The researcher points to frequent situations in hospitals, public services, or other everyday contexts as examples, where professionals address the accompanying person instead of speaking directly to the person with disabilities.
“It shows how we belittle the person with a disability in our daily lives,” he noted.
Fernando Fontes further considers that the paternalism frequently associated with disability constitutes a form of discrimination, as it stems from a relationship of superiority.
“This paternalism is already an aggression in itself. It is a lack of consideration, a lack of respect toward people with disabilities,” he stated.
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The president of the National Mechanism for Monitoring the Implementation of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, Vera Bonvalot, also argues that hate speech rarely appears suddenly.
“Hate speech usually begins with prejudices, and prejudices then transform into discrimination,” she stated.
According to Vera Bonvalot, a recent study by the mechanism concluded that deep prejudices regarding disability persist in Portugal, even among people who do not consider themselves discriminatory.
The official considers that prejudice has “changed its clothes” and appears today less in the form of open rejection and more through paternalism, pity, and the idea that people with disabilities are dependent and permanently in need of protection.
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“Pity seems like a positive feeling, but it is often the gateway to inequality,” she stated, arguing that this gaze frequently leads to the withdrawal of autonomy and the removal of people with disabilities from decision-making processes about their own lives.
Data collected by the mechanism shows that 91% of Portuguese people believe that people with disabilities face frequent or very frequent discrimination. In addition, respondents identify discrimination in areas such as employment, education, health, access to justice, independent living, and public space.
For Vera Bonvalot, when discrimination is perceived in practically all areas of life, it is no longer possible to view it as a set of isolated cases.
“We are no longer dealing with isolated cases; we are dealing with a structural problem,” she stated.
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Experts also warn about the scarcity of data on violence and hate crimes against people with disabilities in Portugal. Fernando Fontes states that statistics are practically nonexistent and that the phenomenon remains understudied and little debated publicly.
In his opinion, this invisibility results in part from the persistence of a welfare-based and charitable view of people with disabilities, who are seen as “poor things” or vulnerable beings, rather than citizens with the same rights as others. The three experts converge on the idea that the fight against hate speech against people with disabilities begins before explicit insults or threats.
It involves, they argue, combating stereotypes, infantilization, dehumanization, and the belief that some people are less capable, less credible, or less important than others.
“The problem is not with the disability; it is with the barriers, the prejudices, and the discrimination that society continues to produce,” Vera Bonvalot summarized.
