Brazilian Students Protest Against Poster at Lisbon University

By Richard Mann, Contributing Reporter

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Brazilian students in Lisbon protested on Tuesday (30th) against a billboard summoning Portuguese students to throw stones at them.

At the Faculty of Law, in Lisbon, it’s election time for the academic association.
Each sorority seeks to attract the largest number of students. Among leaflets, gifts and even food, a poster and a box caught the attention of a passer-by:

Stones offered to be thrown at “zucas” – a term used by many Portuguese to moniker Brazilians living in Lisbon.

“We are talking about suggestive violence, it is suggesting that people can practice violent acts and this, in fact, causes perplexity by not only seeing the box but by seeing people crying, people who are really scared,” said Brazilian student Cláudio Cardona.

The action went viral on social media among Brazilian students, as a demonstration of xenophobia and incitement to violence. The poster demonstrated a clear dissatisfaction with the admission of foreign students.

A student association confessed to the initiative of the controversial box, but stated that it was a prank. The University of Lisbon has decided to open a disciplinary proceeding to establish responsibility for the case. The authors of the racist attack on Brazilians may even be expelled from the educational institution.

“It is an unfortunate attitude, in a very disgraceful and intolerable tone and we will execute disciplinary action on those responsible, although it did not lead nor intended to lead to any violent behavior,” said Dean António Cruz Serra.

The number of foreign students in Portuguese institutions has doubled in the last decade due to a series of initiatives. Today, there are more than 42 thousand immigrants studying in Portugal and the Brazilians rank top on this list.

“Students in this university who wanted to apply for a master’s degree in 2018 were frustrated as they were convinced that their averages, lower than the Brazilian students who came from Brazil and who wanted to apply for a master’s degree, were inflated in regard to their own. Therefore, Portuguese students’ averages, even if lower, were more valuable from a curricular and academic point of view than that of Brazilian students,” explained Portuguese student Afonso Massapina.

The booth and poster have already been removed from the university hall. Now, Brazilian students hope that this will serve as a lesson so that, even jokingly, an attitude like this never happens again.