Supporters of some distance-right Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro on Monday attempted to invade the federal police headquarters in the capital Brasilia, in a flash of post-election violence at the day the president’s electoral defeat become licensed.
Reuters witnesses noticed Bolsonaro supporters, many in their trademark yellow national football jerseys or draped in Brazilian flags, confronting protection forces at police headquarters. Police fired stun grenades and tear gas to disperse the group. Nearby buses and vehicles were set on fire.
Federal police said “disturbances” close to the headquarters had been being treated with help from capital security forces.
The violence unfolded after a Bolsonaro supporter become detained for allegedly organizing violent “anti-democratic acts,” consistent with the judge who ordered his arrest.
Earlier on Monday, the federal electoral court docket (TSE) licensed the October 30 election victory of Bolsonaro’s leftist rival, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, as president. After months of baseless tips that Brazil’s voting machine is prone to fraud, Bolsonaro has neither conceded defeat to Lula nor has he officially blocked the handover of power.
But some of the president’s most diehard supporters have blocked highways in protest and camped out in front of military barracks, calling for a military coup to bar Lula from workplace.
Hundreds of Bolsonaro supporters gathered outside the presidential house on Monday afternoon with banners calling for “military intervention.” The president joined them for a public prayer however did now not address the crowd.
“There’s not going to be an inauguration,” said Jose Trindade, 58, one of the Bolsonaro supporters inside the crowd. “Bolsonaro was re-elected, but they stole it. So handiest the navy can put matters so as.”
The conspiracy theories and subsequent violence have rekindled memories of the January 2021 invasion of the USA Capitol through supporters of former US President Donald Trump. It additionally increases protection worries about January 1, whilst Lula takes office in a public ceremony in Brasilia.
Senator Randolfe Rodrigues, a key Lula aide, said there had been worries approximately the bodily protection of Lula and Vice President-pick Geraldo Alckmin, as protesters had surrounded the hotel in which he is staying in Brasilia. Lula’s crew denied reports that Lula would be removed from the hotel via helicopter.
Brasilia’s public security officers stated they’d secured the region around Lula’s inn, and advised motorists to avoid the center of the metropolis wherein many roads were closed.
Sparked by arrest
The violence in Brasilia got here after Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who has led probes into Bolsonaro and his allies, on Monday ordered the brief arrest of José Acácio Serere Xavante for allegedly carrying out anti-democratic acts.
Xavante, an indigenous chief, is a number of the Bolsonaro supporters who have protested in defiance of the October 30 election end result.
“I cannot accept criminals reigning in Brasil,” Xavante tweeted ultimate month. “Lula can’t be certified.”
Last week, Bolsonaro broke weeks of publish-election silence to say that his situation “hurts my soul.”
“Who comes to a decision wherein I cross are you. Who makes a decision which manner the defense force go are you,” Bolsonaro informed his supporters on the gates of the presidential house on Friday.
In a announcement, the Supreme Court said Moraes “decreed the temporary arrest, for 10 days, of the indigenous José Acácio Serere Xavante, because of proof of the fee of crimes of chance, persecution and violent abolition of the Democratic State of Law.”
It said Xavante had led protests across Brasilia and had used “his function as leader of the Xavante human beings to enlist indigenous and non-indigenous humans to commit crimes,” threatening Lula and Supreme Court justices.
Xavante had “expressly summoned armed human beings to prevent the certification of elected” politicians, the assertion added.