Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has announced that he will investigate and arrest those behind the riots in the capital Brasília. “In the name of defending democracy, we will not be authoritarian towards anyone, but we will also not be lukewarm towards anyone,” Lula told Brazilian television after meeting more than 20 governors in Brasília. “We’re going to investigate and find the people who funded it.” Thousands of people demonstrated against the riots in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.
Radical supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro stormed the government district in Brasília on Sunday. They briefly took control of the country’s main government buildings, invading Congress, the Supreme Court and the Palácio do Planalto, the seat of government. There they rioted, leaving a trail of destruction in their wake. It took hours for the security forces to bring the situation back under control.
About 1,500 suspects were provisionally arrested. Security forces cleared a camp of Bolsonaro sympathizers in front of the armed forces’ headquarters in the capital and temporarily detained the activists, the Justice Ministry said. The people were taken away in around 40 buses, the news portal G1 reported. Camps run by Bolsonaro supporters were also broken up in other cities such as Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, and arrests were also made there.
Bolsonaro has meanwhile been released from the hospital after a short stay. He announced this himself on Twitter. According to media reports, shortly after the riots of his supporters, he was treated in a clinic in the city of Orlando, Florida. Bolsonaro had, according to the Brazilian newspaper O globo According to his own statements, he suffered from severe abdominal pain. The far-right politician’s doctor, Antonio Luiz Macedo, told the Reuters news agency: “It’s not a serious case.”
US Democrats call for Bolsonaro’s expulsion
Brazil’s former leader has been hospitalized several times in recent years after suffering stab wounds during the 2018 election campaign. Since then, Bolsonaro has had to undergo six surgeries.
The 67-year-old has lived in Orlando since the end of last year and did not attend the handover to Lula. In view of the riots in Brazil, the first democrats in the USA have already called for him to be expelled. “He’s a dangerous man,” Democratic Congressman Joaquin Castro said in a CNN interview. His party colleague Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Twitter: “The US must stop granting sanctuary to Bolsonaro in Florida.”