Bloco de Esquerda says he is “very outraged” by the “pressure” from MAI with RTP on “cartoon”.

The BE parliamentary leader said on Monday he was “very angry” at the “pressure” he believes the home secretary has put on the RTP board over a “cartoon” released about police and racism.

“I am also very disgusted with what is happening. We heard the home secretary tell the country that, given something that was released by the RTP, he picked up the phone and called the RTP board of directors, and here is the question: who is the home secretary to put pressure on journalists or on the board RTP directors. What kind of democracy do we live in?” Pedro Filipe Soares answered a question from journalists about the “cartoon” produced by RTP about the police and racism. .

In “the democracy that BE defends,” he continued, “freedom of expression is the greatest good” with all the “duties that come with it,” emphasizing that “censorship has no place in a democracy, that RTP has a space of freedom and has a space of suitability that he must support and which is not hostage to the interests of any government.”

“And the Minister of the Interior who thinks he has the right to convene the board of directors of the RTP to get satisfaction from any event on the RTP, in many ways shows how the Socialist Party operates and what this Socialist Party government is,” he criticized. .

Pedro Filipe Soares noted that he “does not discuss whether this or that cartoon is a consequence of common sense or bad, whether it is good or bad taste, whether it is very offensive or not.”

“And for this reason, yes, I am extremely outraged by these statements by the Minister of the Interior and the actions of the government in this matter,” he condemned.

José Luis Carneiro admitted on Monday that he expressed his dissatisfaction with the RTP “caricature” of the police and racism, and assured that the Portuguese security forces would guarantee the principle of equality.

“On Friday, I had the opportunity to speak with the chairman of the RTP board of directors to express my displeasure that a ‘cartoon’ of this kind was shown at a festival that has so many thousands of young people,” he said. minister.

The Minister of the Interior spoke on the sidelines of the presentation of the prevention and safety plan for Matosinhos Beach. Answering questions from journalists, he expressed regret about the showing of a “cartoon” during the coverage of the NOS Alive music festival on RTP, hinting at the police and racism.

“Cartoon” by Cristina Sampaio, co-creator of the Spam Cartoon collective, which airs on RTP weekly, is called Shooting Career and shows a policeman shooting at a target with increasing intensity. At the end, targets are shown that have darkened due to the aggression of the police, which serves as a metaphor for the theme of racism in law enforcement agencies.

Recognizing the respect for freedom of speech, the minister emphasized, on the other hand, the need to draw the attention of the RTP leadership to “a sense of responsibility so that freedom of speech does not jeopardize the image and prestige of the institutions.”