Far-right violence in Portugal: how to tackle it?
In Portugal, six people linked to a far-right terrorist group have been arrested on suspicion, among other things, of plotting an attack on the Portuguese parliament building. One of them is reportedly a senior officer in the Lisbon police force. The arrests come as the culmination of a wave of threats from far-right circles in Portugal. The national press calls on the country's politicians to start taking the matter more seriously.
We can't keep looking away
The country needs to wake up and defend democracy against far-right enemies, demands Jornal de Notícias:
“We have now arrived at a point where we are seeing a normalisation of things that only a short time ago were considered unacceptable. Under the guise of defending national identity, we are witnessing acts of violence that we should be deeply ashamed of. ... We can't keep looking away when someone next to us does a fascist salute or defends perverse ideals disguised as the defence of integrity or economic development. And even less should we accept it when such actions are justified with the excuse of needing to balance out the extreme left.”
Undermining the rule of law
Público calls for an early warning system:
“The discovery that members of the security forces were part of a neo-nazi militia is worrying for people. .. It should also be worrying for politicians and the security forces, which have remained strangely silent so far. This is a blow to public trust in an important institution responsible for enforcing the rule of law. Democracy cannot afford to ignore signs of extremist infiltration of its own police force. ... Part of a solution to the problem would be to introduce tougher criteria for young applicants to be admitted into the security forces.”