On Jan. 8, right-wing supporters of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro raided the Brazilian Supreme Court, Congressional buildings and Presidential offices. The attacks were justified by protestors under the false pretenses that Brazil’s presidential elections in October of 2022 were rigged, and they come after months of calls for Bolsonaro to retake power via a military coup. Bolsonaro has yet to concede defeat.
Between Jan. 7 and 8, nearly 4000 right-wing supporters arrived in Brasília for a planned demonstration on Sunday. Around 2 p.m. local time on Sunday, protesters began to march towards Congress, but just before 3 p.m., the demonstration took a violent turn as protestors broke through police barriers into Congress, the Presidential Palace and, later, the Supreme Court.
For two hours, rioters vandalized governing chambers. Police began to clear the rioters around 5:30 p.m. local time using water cannons and stun grenades. Since Sunday, police and military forces have increased their presence in the city to curtail further planned rallies.
Prosecutors have been quick to issue arrest warrants for those suspected to be responsible for instigating the protests. As of Jan. 13, more than 1100 individuals were in custody and a further 650 had been released on ‘humanitarian conditions.’
The riots came only a week after newly-elected leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula de Silva was inaugurated. Considered the worst attack on Brazil’s governing institutions since the end of its military dictatorship in 1985, Lula now faces the increasingly politicized challenge to encourage unbiased judicial processes while protecting democratic institutions.
Alexandre de Morae, a Brazilian Supreme Court Justice appointed by Lula, stated prosecutors will focus on arresting and prosecuting political and business elites responsible for aiding rioters. So far, warrants have been issued to Anderson Torres, the former justice minister under Bolsonaro, and Fabio Augusto Vieria, the former head of Brasilia’s military police.
Federal prosecutors have also sought to freeze former president Bolsonaro’s assets, although the viability and timeline of this process are unclear. Bolsonaro is currently in Florida, where he has been since Dec. 29, but recently announced plans to return to Brazil ‘soon’ for medical purposes.
Many in the United States were quick to draw comparisons between Sunday’s riots in Brasília and the Jan. 6 insurrection. Early investigations reveal the critical role social media played in protestor recruitment and planning, similar to the United States example. Using the popular site Telegram, right-wing protestors called for a ‘hunting and fishing’ trip to Brasília and posted maps of the city, local bus routes and thinly-veiled threats about using violence to overturn the election results. With many posts on public threads, prosecutors have already begun compiling evidence alongside livestream Youtube videos of rioters entering the government buildings.
