On Sunday 8 January, thousands of people occupied the institutional buildings in Brasília, protesting against the result of the recent elections.
On 6 January 2021, supporters of Donald Trump, freshly defeated in the American presidential election, stormed the Congress in Washington. Almost exactly two years later, on Sunday 8 January 2023, thousands of protesters stormed three Brazilian institutional buildings in the capital Brasília: Congress, the Supreme Court and the presidential offices. Wearing the national football shirt or with the country's flag draped over their shoulders, they vandalised the buildings in an act of revenge against the alleged fraud — never proven — that they claim distorted the result of Brazil's elections last October. Elections in which their candidate, the outgoing far-right president Jair Bolsonaro, was defeated by Lula.
After Lula's inauguration on 1 January, Jair Bolsonaro's supporters arranged via social media to gather in Brasília on Sunday 8 January. The demonstration quickly turned violent. Thousands of people broke into the headquarters of Congress, the Supreme Court and the presidential offices, which are located in the same square. They smashed windows, overturned furniture and ransacked rooms, damaging priceless works of art. They filmed their own acts of vandalism on their smartphones and posted the videos on social media. "We always said we would never give up," shouts a rioter in one video. "Congress is ours, we have the power." As it was a public holiday, there was nobody inside the buildings: at the time, therefore, there were no reports of fatalities. The injured reportedly numbered 46, six of them seriously. Several journalists and photographers are said to have been attacked and robbed.
Police officers, outnumbered, were initially only able to fire rubber bullets, pepper spray and tear gas. Late in the afternoon, the New York Times reports, army vehicles arrived and the protest was quelled. At nine o'clock in the evening (local time), more than seven hours after the invasion began, Justice Minister Flávio Dino announced that the buildings had been cleared and that at least two hundred people had been arrested. According to the governor of Brasília, more than four hundred arrests were made. On Monday 9 January, police detained 1,200 people who had been camping outside army headquarters.
For years, Jair Bolsonaro levelled countless accusations against Brazil's electronic voting system, claiming it had been manipulated. Every authority that conducted the appropriate checks reached the same conclusion: electronic voting works, is reliable and secure, and has to date given no grounds for fraud of any kind. Yet this systematic campaign of disinformation bore fruit, cementing an atmosphere of mistrust in one of the world's largest democracies.
Lula was not in Brasília at the time of the storming, but travelled there during the day to assess the damage. In his address to the nation he described the invasion of the institutional buildings as "an act of barbarity" and "a violation of the rights of the entire people" carried out by "fascists." An unprecedented act for which, in his view, Jair Bolsonaro also bears some responsibility. He went on to promise to "find out who the financiers of these actions are" and punish them.
Justice Minister Flávio Dino spoke openly of "a very serious attempt to destabilise the democratic state." Alexandre de Moraes, a judge on Brazil's federal supreme court, ordered the removal for ninety days of the governor of the federal district of Brasília, Ibaneis Rocha. He is accused of having deliberately underestimated the scale of the demonstration, ignoring calls to implement an extraordinary security plan.
From Florida, where he has been since 30 December, Jair Bolsonaro denies any responsibility. "Peaceful demonstrations, as provided for by law, are part of democracy. However, looting and invasions of public buildings, such as those that took place today and those carried out by the left in 2013 and 2017, break the law," he tweeted.
"Throughout my entire term I always adhered to the four pillars of the Constitution, respecting and defending the laws, democracy, transparency and our sacred freedom. I also repudiate the accusations, unsupported by evidence, attributed to me by the current head of the executive of Brazil."
