Ventura has 24 hours to remove posters and will pay a fine of 2500 euros per day and for each poster that remains on the streets. Judge explains why poster “is serious”.
The court sentenced Chega this Monday to remove all posters of André Ventura’s presidential campaign that target the gypsy community, stipulating a 24 hour deadline for this to happen.
Judge Ana Barão decided that posters urging people of gypsy ethnicity to “comply with the law” cannot continue to be posted.
If he does not comply with the court’s decision, André Ventura will have to pay a fine of 2500 euros per day and for each poster keep on the streets.
Ventura “cannot help but know that his conviction is based on discriminatory ideas e attacks an ethnic minority“, the sentence reads: poster “aggravates the stigma and prejudice that gypsy communities are already targets of in Portuguese society in general, thus fomenting intolerance, segregation, discrimination and, ultimately, hatred”, quotes the .
The phrase in question present on the poster “it is serious” because “it was reflected” and “it was thought to cause a specific social impact in relation to a social group”, the judge also points out, who emphasizes: with this decision “the Defendant’s right to freedom of expression, and particularly political expression, is not denied”, but “he is required to exercise this right with responsibility in the sense of protecting the human rights of all and combating discrimination, particularly racial or ethnic”.
André Ventura had already assumed authorship of the phrase “gypsies must comply with the law” and considered that it would be a “very serious precedent” if the court ordered the removal of the posters. The leader of Chega stressed that it was not his intention to “humiliate or offend” the gypsy community: “If I wanted to say [que os ciganos não cumprem a lei]I would have said it because I have that right.”
In addition to posters reading “” next to the president of Chega, posters reading “Gypsies must comply with the law” began to appear on the country’s streets at the end of October.
Six gypsy associations filed a complaint at the Public Ministry (MP). Bruno Gonçalves, vice-president of the Letras Nómadas association and on behalf of all associations, said that constitutionalist Vitalino Canas admitted that there may be signs of crime.
Later, the issue of the posters was one of the reasons that led university professor António Garcia Pereira to ask for the immediate removal of campaign posters considered discriminatory and the opening of a criminal investigation for discrimination and incitement to hatred, under the terms of article 240 of the Penal Code, one of the three immediate measures requested by the lawyer.
Regarding the other poster relating to Bangladesh, that country’s Embassy in Lisbon announced that it would request explanations from the “appropriate authorities”.
