- Congress, Supreme Court, Presidential Palace now secured
- Attack compared to 6 January 2021 invasion of the US Capitol
- Bolsonaro supporters still angry, seek Army intervention
The Brazilian Police Force said 300 people were arrested on Sunday during the protests by supporters of Brazil’s far-right former President Jair Bolsonaro who stormed the country’s Congress, the Presidential palace, and the Supreme court.
The protests drew comparisons to the United States (US) Capitol invasion by irate supporters of former President Donald Trump about two years ago.
“300 arrested. Investigations continue until the last member is identified,” the PCDF (Polícia Civil do Distrito Federal) said on Twitter.
However, reports said one of the differences between Sunday’s events in Brazil and the attack on the Capitol is that the attack in Brazil happened on a weekend, when the Congress wasn’t staffed, which made it easier for the protesters to enter the building while putting fewer members of parliament at risk.
Among some of the protesters who spoke to AFP was 49-year-old civil servant Isabella Silva, who said; “We patriots were robbed at the polls by Lula”.
“I want the armed forces to take power and clean up Congress; do a general cleanup,” she said, echoing the demands of her fellow protesters.
The crowd was finally dispersed by police, but their demands stayed behind in messages painted onto the facade, including a call to the military for “Intervention now!”
Yet another read thus; “Destitution of the three powers”, referring to the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government.
“We do not recognise this government because it is illegitimate,” said Victor Rodrigues who, like hundreds of other “bolsonaristas” have remained camped outside the Army headquarters in Brasília since Bolsonaro’s defeat to demand intervention.
Similarly, Sarah Lima, a production engineer who traveled 300 kilometers (about 186 miles) to join the protesters with her 19-month-old twin girls, said she wanted a vote recount to confirm whether Lula’s victory “really was true or not.”
She and her daughters, like many others in the crowd, were dressed in the jersey of the Selecao national football team appropriated by Bolsonaro and his backers as a symbol of nationalist fervor.
Observers have spent months warning that Bolsonaro hardliners might stage a South American version of the US’s Capitol invasion in the hope of overturning Lula’s win. During his tumultuous four-year administration, Bolsonaro repeatedly hinted that a military takeover might be in the works and battled to undermine Brazil’s internationally respected electronic voting system.
“Bolsonaro and his team have looked very closely at what happened on January 6 trying to understand why it was that a sitting president failed in his effort to overturn election results,” the former US ambassador to Brazil, Thomas Shannon, told the Guardian before last year’s election.
The weeks leading up to Lula’s 1 January inauguration saw two clear signals of the violence that was to come. On 13 December, radicals tried to storm the federal police headquarters in Brasília, torching buses and cars as they moved through the city.
Just before Christmas another extremist Bolsonaro supporter was arrested and allegedly confessed to a plot to bomb Brasília’s airport in an attempt to spark turmoil that might justify a military coup.
Protestors ransacked the Supreme Court on Sunday, according to images from social media, which showed protesters clubbing security cameras and shattering the windows of the modernist building. The court’s crusading Justice Alexandre de Moraes has been a thorn in the side of Bolsonaro and his supporters, Reuters reports.
Both Moraes and the court’s Chief Justice Rosa Weber have vowed punishment for the “terrorists”. The heads of both houses of Congress denounced the attacks publicly and moved up plans to fly back to the capital, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke to Reuters.
Rocha, the Brasilia governor, said he had fired his top security official, Anderson Torres, previously Bolsonaro’s Justice Minister. The solicitor general’s office said it had filed a request for the arrest of Torres.
Torres told the website UOL he was with his family on holiday in the United States and had not met with Bolsonaro. UOL reported he was in Orlando, where Bolsonaro is now staying.
“Vandalism and ransacking will be combatted with the rigor of the law,” Anderson tweeted on Sunday afternoon, adding he had directed police in the capital to restore order urgently.
On Saturday, with rumours of a confrontation brewing in Brasilia, Justice Minister Flávio Dino authorised the deployment of the National Public Security Force. On Sunday, he wrote on Twitter, “this absurd attempt to impose the will by force will not prevail”. – With The Guardian reports
