https://www.revistapunkto.com/2024/10/uma-tarde-tranquila-no-bairro-do.html
This is a eyewitness account of protests in Lisbon after the police murder of Odair Moniz, Translated by Ill Will
Introduction by Mutt.
This piece is one person’s perspective on some of the demonstrations he witnessed following the murder of Odair Moniz, a Black man murdered by the Portuguese state. The usual ‘he was no angel’ rhetoric was spun by the right of course and the usual equally as dehumanising retort spun by liberals and leftists pointing out how he was a “innocent” “father of three” and “ran a restaurant” which in itself silently permits the state to murder Black people who aren’t functioning members of society.
Odair was gunned down following a police chase, the police then claimed he had a weapon which they never actually presented. The response from Odair’s community came that same night. A group of 40 with their faces covered set fire to dumpsters and stoned the police as they approached, injuring two of them.
The following day, a demonstration in Zambujal (Which Luhuna is describing below) began in the afternoon. At 20:00 Odair’s home was raided by police. Later that night, a bus was stolen, the passengers were forced out and it was set on fire with molotov cocktails.
The insurrection spread, in Oeiras a car was set on fire, firecrackers and stones were set off and rioters tried to set a petrol station on fire. Another bus was stolen, set on fire and crashed into a house. Tires were burnt as roadblocks. Gunshots were reported.
Rocks were thrown at the Casal de Cambra police station, Sintra. Elsewhere even more dumpsters were set alight, the police announced an increased police presence within “sensitive urban areas”
October 23rd, the social peace is broken further, ‘incidents’ are reported at over sixty police stations. Dumpsters burnt and vehicles being set on fire, two police officers are hospitalised after being pelted with stones.
October 24th, two buses are set alight along with 8 other vehicles. The police report 45 fires involving “street furniture” The police announce their ‘victory’ with the arrests of 13 and the identification of 18 other suspects.
October 26th, A anti-racist organisation organises a march in downtown lisbon, which is countered by a smaller “pro-police” demonstration. The march route was adjusted to avoid “conflict”.
A Peaceful Afternoon In The Zambujal Neighborhood
I arrived in the Zambujal neighborhood with some friends, in time to watch the march that passed in front of the house of Odair Moniz and his family. It was a moment of immense sadness. Someone important to all those people, to that entire community, would not return. Not because he wanted it, not because he was at fault, not because of illness, not because of an accident, simply because he had been in the wrong place at the wrong time, and that wrong place was the target of the gun of a PSP agent who was too frightened of the world to be able to consciously exercise the deadly power that had been entrusted to him. Part of every funeral, every vigil, every mourning, is the encounter with those with whom we share the loss. This one was no different. Some people were crying while some children were playing. No contrast or dichotomy, just part of that way of being together in which celebrating the lives of those who have left fills the breadth of the lives of those who remain. The march was moving through the neighborhood.
Many women of various ages, some men, and a handful of activists from other places. A megaphone was circulated on a pedestrian avenue. People spoke about justice, racism, and a police force that was brought from far away to inflict violence on the neighborhood. They demanded an end to the “tight feeling in the stomach that all mothers feel when their black or gypsy children leave home” because they don’t know if that’s the day a 20-year-old police officer who has never left his hometown decides that he is the Cowboy on duty in Amadora. Anger, a lot of anger, but a contained anger, because it wasn’t the first time and it won’t be the last. In the distance, there are a lot of police. In the opposite direction, at the end of the block, on the corner of the café, several young people, some of them already with their faces covered, are letting time pass. From time to time, they go and get a bin, or tear down a traffic sign, or set off a firecracker. They wait until nightfall, gathering elements for a barricade. Many are still children. They jump and jump, shouting “vingança, vingança!” (“revenge, revenge!”). A now older boy, with his face covered, pushes a container where the police can see him and shouts “suck my dick, fucking pigs” while grabbing his balls. Shortly after, a lady comes to the window and calls him by name to go home. Little does he know that he has committed the crime of insulting the authorities and endangering public order.
The people at the rally and the young people seem to be worlds apart. They don’t talk much. The young people are going to cause a huge mess and no one will be able to stop them. But at the same time, there is a certain familiarity present. There is something tragic about the situation, which doesn’t end there. They will all have to continue to deal with the violence and brutality of the way Odair died, when none of this appears in the news anymore. The afternoon goes on. Taxis, buses, people returning from work and school, parents with children pass by. On a street corner, some South Asian men are doing construction work at the entrance to their grocery store, seemingly indifferent to the situation that is approaching. It would seem like a normal day in a quiet neighborhood, were it not for the police presence at one end of the street and a riot brewing at the other. But even that doesn’t seem to disturb the people. No one runs, no one runs away, even though everyone knows what is going to happen.
The calm is almost seductive, and as we get to know the people who come up to us and ask us who we are and what we are doing there, we almost forget what happened there, what we are doing there. It could just be a good afternoon spent getting to know people. We are, in a way, alone in the neighborhood. We don’t know anyone, we have no contact. And yet there is no hostility. Everyone is quick to speak to us in a friendly way. They explain to us that they do not believe the police version, which they dismantle in a thousand ways: “Where was the knife then? If there was a knife they would have already shown it”; “These are police officers from the North who come here to kill us”; “He was drunk and had had an accident, how was that a threat?”; “it is most likely that they had already shot him before the car hit the wall”; “So why did the PSP officer say there was no need for it?” The opinions are the same. A gypsy man who owns a stall in Benfica tells us about an uncle of his who died in a shootout with the police, but he was a real criminal, and those who live by the sword die by the sword.
Everyone agrees that yes, if he were a real criminal, friend or not, he would be playing a game where these things happen, but that Odair was a calm, peaceful, innocent guy. Nothing justifies the two shots he received. Another man, holding a pitbull, asks if we are from CMTV. We explain that we are not and we continue talking, he tells us about his informal social assistance programmes, ending the conversation by saying that here in Amadora they are the Palestinians. People join in and leave the conversation as the afternoon goes on. The sun disappears behind the buildings. Everyone knows what is going to happen. “The kids have no sense,” everyone agrees, “but they are right, it couldn’t be like this.” We hear several versions of this throughout the day, as if people were talking to themselves. On the one hand, they are aware that the upcoming riots will be dangerous and destructive, but on the other, they also feel an outrage that no politician or commentator will ever know how to respond to.
They know that the next day they will be crucified on television by a dozen talking heads who will project onto those blocks the American and Brazilian films they watched on Netflix, talking about drug dealers and gangs that rule over the neighborhood with an iron fist, but they also know that this is precisely why so many of those young people will spend the next few hours burning everything they can get their hands on. The whole of Portugal has a say in their lives without ever having spent five seconds near them. Night falls. As we ponder whether to stay or go, we see a parked bus at the end of the block. Its windows are being broken with stones from the pavement. Then Molotov cocktails rain down and the vehicle begins to burn. In the distance, several people watch the fire in astonishment and disbelief, spellbound by the flames, as if time had stopped, until someone shouts “police!” and the streets immediately empty. We only stop running at the end of the street, close to the tunnel that leads to Buraca.
A giant tower of smoke cuts through the dark blue sky. People arriving in the neighborhood from the train wait there for the situation to calm down. It is a strange image, which echoes those that everyone has seen a thousand times on television, but in distant places around the world. A young black woman, dressed as if she had just come from a corporate job in the city center, repeats what we have heard so far: “Damn, now we don’t have a bus stop? But look, they did the right thing, we are outraged.” This is the contradiction at play: everyone there aspires to have a normal life, but that normal life will always be denied to them with the same violence with which they will be punished for not having it.