A 39-year-old man was arrested during the March for Life on Saturday, 21 March, in Lisbon, Portugal, for throwing a Molotov cocktail at participants.

The incident took place at the end of the event, when the attendees were gathered in front of the Portuguese Parliament. The device failed to ignite when it landed among the crowd and there were no reported injuries from the attack.

The attacker was subdued by the demonstrators before the police intervened. They brought him to the hospital for examination, and later put him in custody. According to the police, he and three other individuals who fled, “were allegedly part of a group with anarchist leanings”.

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Right after the incident, Portugal’s new minister of internal administration, Luís Neves, said on social media that the government does not tolerate any form of violent extremism, and they “will continue to act firmly to prevent and combat it, safeguarding democratic values”.

The patriarch of Lisbon, Archbishop Rui Manuel Sousa Valério, also condemned the attack against the March for Life, and defined it as unacceptable. Violence is never the way, he said, because it “harms human dignity and does not serve the truth”.

Evangelicals: Respect for life and freedom of expression

The Portuguese Evangelical Alliance (AEP) also regretted and denounced the incident.

“Even if we disagree”, the evangelical body said, they “respect those who hold opposing views”. That said, the AEP “repudiates any type of violence as a way of expressing these disagreements”.

“Just as we defend respect for life, we also hold the same position regarding freedom of expression”, stresses the Alliance.

“A terrorist act”

The Portuguese Federation for Life, which organizes the march, issued a press release calling the incident a “terrorist act”.

According to the organisation, “the failure of the attack cannot obscure the fact that a political organization planned and sought to carry out an attack against a public event packed with families, youths, and children”.

The federation also announced that it will request a meeting with the minister of internal administration and the Attorney General to address the incident and that, “at the appropriate moment”, it will “join a friend of the court in the ensuing judicial proceedings”.

4,000 march for life in Lisbon

Thousands took to the streets in twelve Portuguese cities March for Life on 21st March, to take a stand against abortion and euthanasia.

The one in Lisbon was the most attended, with around 4,000 participants.

This year theme was “The pro-life people take to the streets” and aimed to be a march “for the dignity of all human beings, for life from the moment of conception until natural death, and for families”.