Pro-Bolsonaro supporters storm Brazil's gov't buildings in Jan 6.-style attack
In a stunning echo of the US’s Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, supporters of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro on Sunday stormed Brazil’s Congress, presidential palace and Supreme Court, refusing to accept his recent re-election defeat.
Thousands of Bolsonaro’s loyalists flooded the buildings in the country’s capital of Brasilia despite security barriers, just a week after leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s inauguration.
Donning the green and yellow of the Brazilian flag, the rioters broke windows and climbed onto the roofs.
“The government of the Federal District has ensured there will be reinforcements. And the forces at our disposal are at work,” Justice Minister Flavio Dino tweeted, referring to the crews pushing back rioters.
“This absurd attempt to impose their will by force will not prevail,” he said of protesters.
At a news conference from Sao Paulo state, Lula said Bolsonaro had encouraged the uprising by those he termed “fascist fanatics,” and he read a freshly signed decree for the federal government to take control of security in the federal district.
“There is no precedent for what they did and these people need to be punished,” Lula said.
Lula was voted into office Oct. 30, but Bolsonaro has repeatedly denied without evidence the election results.
The rioters trashed the room where the Supreme Court, with which Bolsonaro repeatedly sparred, convenes.
They sprayed fire hoses inside the Congress building and ransacked offices at the presidential palace. Windows were broken in all of the buildings.
Bolsonaro, who was spotted in Florida in the past week, has not commented on the Brasilia riot.
Police fired tear gas to try to regain control of the buildings, and less than four hours after the storming, security forces were shown on television backing protesters away from the Supreme Court and marching them down a ramp to the presidential palace with their hands secured behind their backs.
At his news conference, Lula said there was “incompetence or bad faith”″on the part of police, and that they had been likewise complacent when Bolsonaro supporters rioted in the capital weeks ago.
He promised those officers would be punished and expelled from the corps.
The incident was reminiscent of the attack on the US Capitol, when supporters of outgoing President Donald Trump stormed the building in Washington, DC, in a bid to overturn the results of the election Trump lost to Joe Biden.
President Biden told reporters the unrest was “outrageous.”
His national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, went further on Twitter, asserting that the US “condemns any effort to undermine democracy in Brazil.”
Biden later tweeted that he looked forward to continuing to work with Lula, and labeled the riots an “assault on democracy and on the peaceful transfer of power in Brazil.”
Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ), who chairs the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee, tweeted, “Two years since Jan. 6, Trump’s legacy continues to poison our hemisphere.”
“Protecting democracy & holding malign actors to account is essential.”
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