President Jair Bolsonaro on Friday denounced a police operation against businessmen who support him, saying that freedom of expression was under attack and that Brazil was “on the way to dictatorship”.
Searches targeted several businessmen supporting Jair Bolsonaro on Tuesday after revelations in the press that they had mentioned a possible coup if the far-right president was not re-elected in October.
Searches and blockages of social networks
Bolsonaro claimed that “the eight businessmen came very close” to being arrested and that the ongoing investigation was an attempt to muzzle his supporters. “Brazil is on the road to dictatorship. This is how dictatorships start today. You lose (your freedom) little by little, then one day you realize that you are completely tied up,” he told Jovem Pan radio station.
Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, the new head of Brazil’s highest electoral court and a frequent target of attacks from the Bolsonaro camp, issued search warrants to federal police that would target several of these businessmen and ordered the blocking their accounts on social networks.
Leaked messages
The Metropoles news site reported last week that the latter had “openly defended a coup” if Jair Bolsonaro was not re-elected against the left-wing ex-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, known as Lula, leader of the Workers’ Party (PT), leading in the polls.
The article cites leaked messages from a WhatsApp chat group in which members of the group say they “prefer a coup to the return of the PT” and that “the blood of victims will become the blood of heroes”. .
Among them the billionaire Luciano Hang, 59, whose fortune is estimated at 4.8 billion dollars by Forbes magazine, shouted Thursday for “censorship” after the blocking of his Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and TikTok accounts , where it is followed by millions of people. “This week it was business leaders, tomorrow it could be YOU,” he wrote in one of his latest posts on twitter.
Several of these businessmen have denied wanting to undermine democracy: “I have never fomented any coup d’etat. I stand for freedom and democracy,” Hang said in a statement released by his company.