In Brazil, police have made hundreds of arrests and reclaimed control of the Congress, presidential mansion, and Supreme Court from rioting Bolsonaro supporters.
A grim echo of the invasion of the US Capitol two years ago by ardent supporters of former President Donald Trump, the police said in a tweet on Sunday that at least 300 people had been detained in the nation’s capital, Brasilia, following the rampage by thousands of Bolsonaro’s supporters who refuse to accept his election defeat.
The police vowed that investigations would go on “until the last member is found.”
No initial reports of fatalities or injuries were made following the attack on Sunday, but the attackers left a path of devastation, tossing furniture through the presidential palace’s broken windows, flooding portions of Congress with sprinklers, and looting the Supreme Court’s ceremonial rooms.
The protest, which lasted little over three hours, highlighted the extreme polarization that still exists in the nation days after the victory of Bolsonaro’s opponent, the leftist Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, and days after his inauguration as president.
Lula read a recently signed decree ordering the federal government to take responsibility of security in Brasilia during a news conference from Sao Paulo state, where he accused Bolsonaro of promoting the riots by what he called “fascist zealots.”
“What they did has never been done before,” Lula stated.
“We’ll find all these people who committed this, and we’ll punish them.”
The president subsequently took a flight back to Brasilia where he toured the looted facilities and oversaw the response, according to TV Globo in Brazil.
The far-right Bolsonaro, who has yet to admit defeat and who traveled to Florida in the US days before the end of his tenure, remained silent about the pandemonium in Brasilia for nearly six hours. In response to Lula’s accusations, he tweeted that he disputed the president’s claims and condemned “pillaging and assaults of public buildings.”
Additionally, the incursions were denounced by world leaders.
The events, according to US Vice President Joe Biden, were a “attack on democracy and on the peaceful transfer of power,” and Washington had full support for Brazil’s democratic institutions.
Charles Michel, the president of the European Council, tweeted his “total disgust,” and Emmanuel Macron, the president of France, urged respect for Brazil’s institutions and offered Lula “France’s unflinching support.”
A number of Latin American presidents expressed out, with Mexico’s Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador calling it a “reprehensible coup attempt” and Chilean President Gabriel Boric calling it a “cowardly and despicable attack on democracy.”
Meanwhile, a number of US Democratic senators claimed that Washington could no longer offer Bolsonaro “refuge” in the nation.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted, “We must stand in solidarity with [Lula’s] democratically elected government.” “The United States must stop giving Bolsonaro asylum in Florida.”
On their Telegram groups, Bolsonaro’s supporters have been planning these attacks, and over the past week, buses carrying hundreds of people have been arriving in Brasilia. Since the military police and the armed forces in general have been fervent Bolsonaro supporters, it came as a surprise that the security forces in Brasilia were so slow to react. This has raised questions about their allegiances.
Announcing “incompetence or bad faith” on the part of the Brazilian police, Lula stated at his news conference that those officers would be disciplined and dismissed from the force.
Yanakiev pointed out that earlier social media videos had depicted a sparse presence of the military police in the city; one of them showed officers watching as crowds poured into Congress while one was using his phone to take pictures.
She remarked, “Lula’s main objective right now is to prevent any coup attempts and further instances like this.”
We must keep in mind that even though only a small number of people broke into these three buildings and destroyed the windows and furniture, Bolsonaro has many supporters throughout Brazil who think the elections were rigged, the Supreme Court is biased, Congress will play hardball with the government, and they are right to prevent Lula from becoming president.
Meanwhile, Brazilian analysts demanded that Bolsonaro’s involvement in the violence be looked into.
According to Vinicius Vieira, an associate professor of economics and international relations at the Armando Alvares Penteado Foundation, this was unquestionably a coup attempt by Bolsonaro’s most ardent supporters.
And Bolsonaro encouraged that when he was in office, especially in opposition to the Supreme Court. Because Bolsonaro’s far-right beliefs were constantly being challenged by the Supreme Court’s attempts to apply constitutional principles, he told Al Jazeera.
In other words, if not from Bolsonaro himself, “that was completely articulated, it’s surely an outcome, a consequence of his misbehavior as president that did not actually follow the constitutional laws,” he said.
In Brasilia, Governor Ibaneis Rocha, a steadfast Bolsonaro supporter facing difficult questions on Sunday’s security failings, declared that he had sacked Anderson Torres, his police head.
The former justice minister for Bolsonaro, Torres, was reportedly in Orlando, Florida, where the former president is currently staying, according to the website UOL. Torres, though, claimed to the outlet that he had not met Bolsonaro.
Torres “and all other public officials accountable for acts and omissions” contributing to the unrest,” according to the attorney general’s office, have been named in a request to the Supreme Court for arrest warrants. Additionally, it requested permission from the high court to use “all public security forces” to retake federal facilities and disperse widespread anti-government demonstrations.
The terrorists who took part in these atrocities, according to Chief Justice Rosa Weber, “shall be thoroughly tried and exemplarily punished.”
Speaker of the House Arthur Lira stated that the Brazilian parliament “would never provide room for instability, destruction, and vandalism” as the leaders of both chambers of Congress officially denounced the attacks.
Rodrigo Pacheco, the speaker of the senate, said that he “vehemently repudiates these anti-democratic practices, which must immediately confront the rigor of the law.”
According to a union for journalists, at least five journalists were attacked, including a photographer for the AFP news agency who was pummeled by demonstrators and had his equipment taken.
