During a visit to the Fundão Migration Centre, accompanied by the party's lead candidate for the European elections, Catarina Martins, the coordinator of the Left Bloc said that it is one thing to have a complacent attitude when the Chega bench shouts and reveals "bad manners and disrespect for the institution", another "is when the president of the Assembly legitimizes a racist discourse".

Mariana Mortágua highlighted the importance of distinguishing what she considers to be racist or xenophobic comments from what is freedom of expression.

"To say that one race is inferior, that a skin colour is inferior, that a person, just because they are Turkish, is lazy, is not an opinion, it is racism, it is a crime, it is a hate crime, and then it justifies all the horrors that are happening", stressed Mariana Mortágua.

The BE coordinator added that she hopes that the leaders' conference can "discuss this issue and make decisions commensurate with the seriousness of what happened".

"It never crossed my mind that the president of the Assembly of the Republic, a lawyer, who knows the law, a man who claims to be a democrat, would legitimize the discourse of the far right in this way", criticized Mariana Mortágua.

The BE leader added that slavery or the Holocaust happened because "people believed that there were inferior races, that there were inferior human beings".

"The Holocaust was based on the idea that the other is inferior, is dehumanized and, therefore, we can abuse them, criticize them and insult them without any consequences and call it freedom of expression", compared Mariana Mortágua.

The BE leader explained the visit to Fundão because it is "a good example in the reception and integration of immigrants" and because it is a municipality that "is teaching the country a lesson".

According to Mariana Mortágua, it is important to spend more time showing examples of how immigrants contribute to the economy, contribute to combating desertification, bring children to schools in territories where they were closing, and "spend less time talking about violence and hatred".

"Portugal does not want to be a country of violence, it wants to be a country where everyone lives in safety, that welcomes, that integrates because it needs to, not only because we are a country of emigrants, because we fled war, because we have already fled misery, because we have already fled poverty to so many countries and now it is also time for us to integrate those who seek us", reinforced the BE coordinator.

On Friday, Aguiar-Branco stated in the Assembly of the Republic that the use of language that qualifies races deprecatingly falls within freedom of expression and is admissible, after the leader of Chega said that the Turks "were not known for being the most hard-working people in the world".

140 migrants reside in the Fundão Migration Centre, including students, seasonal workers and refugees, the structure supports 270 people who are already independent and around 300 migrants have already passed through the space, which has existed since 2016.

Read Also: Rui Moreira accuses Mortágua of having "a problem with the truth" (Portuguese version)