Around 150 people demonstrated outside parliament yesterday (Sunday) protesting against Portugal taking in any refugees – no matter what the quota eventually decided.
With numbers vacillating wildly and no clear indication of how many refugees Portugal will eventually be assigned to Portugal by Brussels, the bottom line coming from the Cuidar dos Nossos Primeiro (Look after our own first) movement is that no refugees will be welcome here.
Público reports that the movement – made up of a number of groups of “various interpretations” – put together the Facebook page entitled: “Refugiados Não Obrigado” which went underground over the weekend.
The nuts and bolts of the page is that Portugal “cannot afford the luxury” of taking in refugees without first fixing its own problems.
Spokesperson Nelson Dias da Silva explained: “If we are talking about migrants, let’s choose them. This is what any civilized country would do. Look at its economy, its economic sector and then choose the people it needs, the qualifications and also the culture.”
As Público explained, the protest brought together a lot of openly anti-Islamic banners “Sharia = primitive law”, “Portugal against Islam” and “No to the invasion of Europe”, as well as banners “thanking Hungary” for having shut its borders.
