The Judicial Police arrested on Thursday the suspect of two crimes of attempted murder and two crimes of discrimination and incitement to hatred in Porto.
The attacks on immigrants in the city of Porto this week are worrying academics linked to the issue of migration, who criticize the actions of the media and politicians who dehumanize those who arrive in Portugal.
As regards attacks against immigrants, we are witnessing "a frequency that we were not used to", which "means that there is, in fact, a growing antipathy or antagonism towards some ethnic minorities, whether they are migrants or nationals with a skin colour different from the Portuguese imagined as white", Pedro Góis, a professor at the University of Coimbra and recently appointed scientific director of the Migration Observatory, told Lusa.
For the researcher, this feeling has consequences for the country's "collective social cohesion" and highlights the need for a discourse of inclusion and a strong reaction against "acts of exclusion and denial of what is a multicultural Portugal, which is the Portugal of the future".
As such, actions must "start at school and integrate into school curricula this need to deal with the difference that exists within the country today".
But it is also necessary to "debate in the public space so that there is this warning that this population that has arrived in the meantime is here to stay and we must get used to it as other Europeans got used to the Portuguese when they began to emigrate".
João Carvalho, a researcher at ISCTE and specialist in migration, mobility and ethnicity, makes the same comparison.
"We must seek to draw parallels with our emigrant community abroad" when addressing these types of attacks. "Imagine if two Portuguese citizens were stabbed in France or England in a similar event.
What would be the reaction of Portuguese society?", he asked, recalling that "Portugal is the country in the European Union with the largest emigrant community in relation to the size of the country".
The Judicial Police (PJ) arrested on Thursday the suspect of two crimes of attempted murder and two crimes of discrimination and incitement to hatred and violence, which occurred in the early hours of Monday against two immigrants in Porto.
In recent months, downtown Porto has been the scene of several disturbances and hate crimes, which, according to a source from the PSP, has led to increased police surveillance in areas considered to be the most critical.
For João Carvalho, it is necessary "not to disseminate views that are not true", such as those that link immigrants with dependence on Social Security or with an increase in crime.
Without immigrants, "Portugal would be a much poorer country", he said, accusing some political forces, in particular Chega, of "creating a division in society" because of immigration.
Now, according to Eurobarometer, immigrants are not among the main concerns of the Portuguese, he explained.
"Chega was the most voted party in the Algarve, but immigration was not considered one of the main concerns at a regional level", unlike districts such as Leiria or Lisbon, João Carvalho exemplified.
The same is true in Porto, where there have been more attacks. "Porto is also not a place where immigration is seen as a priority", which shows that "there is no direct relationship between the concentration of immigrants and the occurrence of attacks".
Despite this, this type of attack is "somewhat unique in Portuguese history" and shows that "there is an anti-immigration discourse, which is being propagated in the news and reproduced by the media", which contaminates society.
"This discourse may legitimize more extremist people within society to carry out extremist acts", feeling "justified by the statements they find in the news that their concerns are real and that they should do something about it", explained the ISCTE researcher.
Following the attacks, there were "traditional media outlets that repeated the potential relationship between crime and immigration rates without providing a single statistical piece of evidence to prove it," João Carvalho explained.
Pedro Góis also criticizes the role of the media: "The media has a great responsibility", he said, arguing that "it is necessary to humanize migrants".
"Immigrants are not just workers, they are people who should be treated with the same dignity that we all like to be treated with," he summarized.
On the other hand, the professor at the University of Coimbra highlighted that the country must stop focusing on regularization campaigns and focus on "long-term integration".
"It also seems to me that the agencies that deal with these issues need to be more active, possibly providing more training to the authorities and communicating the law better, so that it can be implemented", seeking to "very quickly create a way of internalizing the difference", added Pedro Góis.