Brazil to punish Bolsonaro rioters
Biden, others slam chaos similar to US Jan. 6 siege
RIO DE JANEIRO — Brazilian authorities vowed Monday to protect democracy and punish thousands of supporters of ex-President Jair Bolsonaro who stormed and trashed the nation’s highest seats of power in a riot with striking similarities to the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. insurrection.
In an unprecedented display for Latin America’s largest nation, protesters swarmed into Congress, the Supreme Court and presidential palace Sunday. Many of them said they wanted the Brazilian army to restore the far-right Bolsonaro to power and oust the newly inaugurated leftist president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
Police broke down a pro-Bolsonaro encampment outside a military building Monday and detained some 1,200 people
there, the justice ministry’s press office said. The Federal Police press office said the force plans to indict roughly 1,000 people.
Lula and the heads of the Supreme Court, Senate and Lower House also signed a letter Monday that denounced the attack and said they are taking legal measures.
Justice Minister Flavio Dino told reporters that police have begun tracking those who paid for the buses that transported protesters to the capital.
Speaking Monday at a news conference, he said rioters apparently intended for their displays to create a domino effect nationwide, and they can be charged with a range of crimes, including organized crime, staging a coup and violent abolition of the democratic rule of law.
“We think that the worst is over,” Dino said, adding that the government is now focused on punishing lawbreakers and those who enabled them. “We cannot and will not compromise in fulfilling our legal duties, because this fulfillment is essential so such events do not repeat themselves.”
President Joe Biden, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau slammed the chaos in a statement Monday from Mexico City.
“Canada, Mexico, and the United States condemn the January 8 attacks on Brazil’s democracy and on the peaceful transfer of power,” they said ahead of a summit of North American leaders.
The New York Times reported Monday that days before supporters of Bolsonaro laid siege to the capital, social media platforms were flooded by calls to organize attacks against critical infrastructure, with oil refineries and roadblocks among the main targets.
The instigators of Sunday’s riots have not been publicly identified. But in the days after Lula was
sworn in as president Jan. 1, messages appeared on the Telegram and WhatsApp messaging apps inviting people to take part in the “Festa da Selma,” or Selma’s Party.
The organizers appeared to turn the word “selva,” or jungle, into “Selma” by replacing the letter V with the letter M. The word selva is linked to the armed forces and its veterans. Over recent decades it has become a kind of war cry for both the military and those who defend them. Many of those are also Bolsonaro supporters.
Rioters wearing the green and yellow of the national flag Sunday broke windows, toppled furniture, and hurled computers and printers to the ground. They punched holes in a Emiliano Di Cavalcanti painting at the presidential palace and destroyed other works of art. They overturned the U-shaped table at which Supreme Court justices convene, ripped a door off one justice’s office and vandalized a statue outside the court. The monumental buildings’ interiors were left in states of ruin.
Monday’s arrests came in addition to the 300 held Sunday.
Police had been slow to react — even after the arrival of more than 100 buses — leading many to ponder whether authorities had either ignored numerous warnings, underestimated the protesters’ strength or
been somehow complicit.
Public prosecutors in the capital said local security forces had been negligent. A supreme court justice temporarily suspended the regional governor. Another justice blamed authorities for not swiftly cracking down on budding neofascism in Brazil.
After his Oct. 30 electoral defeat, Bolsonaro, who has gone to Florida, has been stoking belief among his supporters that the electronic voting system was prone to fraud — though he never presented any evidence. His lawmaker son Eduardo Bolsonaro held several meetings with former President Donald Trump, Trump’s longtime ally Steve Bannon and his senior campaign adviser, Jason Miller.
By early afternoon Monday, the remaining Bolsonaro supporters dissipated as word spread that he was hospitalized in Florida with abdominal pain. His condition wasn’t clear. He has been hospitalized multiple times since surviving a stabbing in 2018.
Results from Brazil’s election — the closest in over three decades — were quickly recognized by politicians across the spectrum, including some Bolsonaro allies. Bolsonaro neither conceded defeat nor emphatically cried fraud, though he and his party submitted a request to nullify millions of votes that was dismissed.