Brazil : Lula vows to punish Bolsonaro supporters for rioting in parliament

Brazil­ian Pres­i­dent Luis Ina­cio Lula da Sil­va has vowed to pun­ish sup­port­ers of the coun­try’s for­mer leader Jair Bol­sonaro after storm­ing parliament.

Sup­port­ers of the deposed far-right leader also stormed the Supreme Court and sur­round­ed the pres­i­den­tial palace.

But in the cap­i­tal Brasil­ia, police regained con­trol of the build­ing on Sun­day night after hours of clashes.

After arriv­ing, Lula toured the Supreme Court build­ing and per­son­al­ly checked the extent of the damage.

The Brasil­ia Civ­il Police said 300 peo­ple had been arrested.

The city’s gov­er­nor, Ibanez Rocha, has been sus­pend­ed from office for 90 days by the Supreme Court. Judge Alexan­dre de Moraes accused him of fail­ing to pre­vent the riot and being “painful­ly silent” about the attack. Rocha has apol­o­gized for Sun­day’s incident.

Left-wing lead­ers and groups across Brazil are call­ing for pro-democ­ra­cy rallies.

Thou­sands of demon­stra­tors in T‑shirts and yel­low Brazil­ian flags over­whelmed the police and rav­aged the heart of the Brazil­ian state in this dra­mat­ic scene just one week after Pres­i­dent Lula’s inauguration.

Vet­er­an lead­ers of the Left were forced to declare a state of emer­gency and send Nation­al Guard forces into the cap­i­tal to restore order.

It also ordered a 24-hour clo­sure of the cen­ter of the cap­i­tal, includ­ing boule­vards hous­ing gov­ern­ment offices.

Jus­tice Min­is­ter Flavio Dino said about 40 bus­es used to trans­port pro­test­ers to the cap­i­tal had been seized, call­ing the inva­sion “an absurd attempt to force the (pro­test­ers’) will on them.”

Bol­sonaro has repeat­ed­ly refused to con­cede defeat in Octo­ber’s elec­tions and left the coun­try last week with­out attend­ing his inau­gu­ra­tion when he was sup­posed to hand over the icon­ic pres­i­den­tial sash.

The 67-year-old, who lives in Flori­da, post­ed a Twit­ter mes­sage about six hours after the riots broke out, con­demn­ing the attack and deny­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty for encour­ag­ing the mob.

Before arriv­ing in Brasil­ia, Lula said his spec­ta­cle in Brasil­ia was “unprece­dent­ed in the his­to­ry of our coun­try” and called the vio­lence “an act of hooli­gans and fascists”.

He then tar­get­ed the secu­ri­ty forces, who he accused of “incom­pe­tence, mal­ice and mal­ice” for fail­ing to pre­vent demon­stra­tors from enter­ing parliament.