[Lula Vows To Punish ‘Neo-Fascists’ After Bolsonaro Supporters
Storm Congress.]
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BRAZIL PROTESTS  
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Tom Phillips, Andrew Downie
January 8, 2023
The Guardian
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_ Lula Vows To Punish ‘Neo-Fascists’ After Bolsonaro Supporters
Storm Congress. _

Mass arrests made in Brazil after invasion of government buildings,

 

Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva
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toured the wreckage of his presidential palace after an extraordinary
day of political violence in the capital, Brasília, saw thousands of
far-right extremists run riot through the country’s democratic
institutions in a failed attempt to overthrow his week-old government.

The massed attack by supporters of the ex-president Jair Bolsonaro
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security breach that was immediately compared to the 6 January
invasion of the US Capitol by followers of Donald Trump in 2021.

Lula was not in Brasília at the time of the attack but he gave an
angry speech blaming Bolsonaro for the chaos and promising that
“anyone involved will be punished”.

Police confront protesters invading the National Congress in
Brasília, Brazil. Photograph: Andre Borges/EPA

Calling those who took part in the attacks “vandals, neo-fascists
and fanatics”, Lula ordered a federal intervention in the capital,
bringing policing under the control of the central government.

“What we are witnessing is a terrorist attack,” the news anchor
Erick Bang announced on the GloboNews television network as word of
the upheaval spread. “The three buildings have been invaded by
coup-mongering terrorists.”

“It was much worse than what happened at the Capitol,” the former
supreme court judge Marco Aurélio Mello told the O Globo newspaper on
Sunday night after police made at least 300 arrests relating to the
attack.

Shocking video footage showed pro-Bolsonaro militants sprinting up the
ramp into the Palácio do Planalto, the presidential offices, roaming
the building’s corridors and vandalising the nearby supreme court,
whose windows had been smashed.

Videos posted on social media showed fires burning inside the congress
building. Furniture was broken and tossed around, objects were
reportedly stolen in the presidential palace and the supreme court,
and in some places sprinklers appeared to be dousing chambers.

Brazil protests: Minister shows aftermath of damage after mob stormed
his office – video

“They are throwing chairs out of the windows,” said another
bewildered GloboNews commentator, Eliane Cantanhêde. “They are
destroying public buildings.”

Lula, a veteran leftist, was sworn in as Brazil’s new president
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Sunday in celebrations attended by hundreds of thousands of
Brazilians.

But thousands of pro-Bolsonaro extremists have refused to accept
Lula’s narrow victory in October’s election, spending recent weeks
camping outside army bases across the country and calling for a
military coup.

Bolsonaro, a far-right former army captain whose main international
ally was Trump, flew out of Brazil
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inauguration and is currently in Florida. He responded to Sunday’s
events with a short string of social media posts defending his record
in government while saying invasion of public buildings crossed the
line.

“Peaceful demonstrations, within the law, form part of democracy,”
he wrote on Twitter. “However, depredations and invasions of public
buildings like those that happened today, as well as those practiced
by the left in 2013 and 2017, are exceptions to the rule.”

Bolsonaro stopped short of condemning the mob outright and instead hit
out at Lula’s claims that he was responsible.

“Throughout my mandate, I have always stayed within the four lines
of the constitution, respecting and defending laws, democracy,
transparency and our sacred freedom. In addition, I reject the
baseless accusations attributed to me by the current head of the
executive branch in Brazil
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Military police in Brasília were conspicuous by their absence on
Sunday and the mobs faced little opposition as they marched towards
the three branches of government.
On Sunday night the supreme court justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered
Ibaneis Rocha, the pro-Bolsonaro governor of the federal district,
where Brasília is located, to be removed from his post for 90 days
amid outrage that authorities had failed to prevent the attack.

De Moraes wrote that the attacks “could only have happened with the
acquiescence, or even direct involvement, of public security and
intelligence authorities.”

Lula said capital law enforcement bodies showed “incompetence, bad
faith or malice” and promised swift action.

Supporters of former president Jair Bolsonaro demonstrate outside
Brazil’s congress in Brasília, Brazil. Photograph: Adriano
Machado/Reuters

By the end of the afternoon, authorities appeared to have retaken
control of some of the buildings, and police said 300 people had been
arrested. TV footage showed dozens of people handcuffed and lying on
the ground, watched over by law enforcement officers.

Lula’s response came a few hours after a pro-Bolsonaro mob marched
8km from the army headquarters in Brasília towards the heart of
Brazilian politics, the Three Powers Plaza, which houses the supreme
court, the presidential palace and congress.

The militants – many wearing the yellow and green Brazil flag that
became a symbol of Bolsonaro’s far-right movement – broke through
police lines at about 3pm and surged on to the ramp leading into the
congress building.

Soon after another prominent Lula ally, André Janones, shared footage
that showed scores of radicals inside the grounds of the Palácio do
Planalto, the presidential offices where last week’s inauguration
ceremony was held.

“Terrorists have invaded the Planalto,” Janones tweeted
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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
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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
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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.

_TOM PHILLIPS is the Guardian's Latin America correspondent _

_ANDREW DOWNIE has been a foreign correspondent in Brazil for 20 years
and is author of the book Doctor Socrates: Footballer, Philosopher,
Legend [[link removed]]_

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* Brazil
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* Jair Bolsonaro
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* Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva
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