Brazilian security forces on Monday cleared protest camps and arrested 1,500 people as Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva condemned “acts of terrorism” after a far-right mob stormed the seat of power, unleashing chaos on the capital.
Hundreds of troops and police mobilized to dismantle an improvised camp outside the army’s headquarters in Brasilia.
There, about 3,000 supporters of former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro had set up tents — used as a base for the sea of protesters who ran riot inside the presidential palace, the Congress and the Brazilian Supreme Court for about four hours on Sunday.
Photo: AFP
Lula, who took office on Jan. 1 after a bitterly divisive election win over Bolsonaro, returned to work in the pillaged presidential palace.
Lula met with the leaders of both houses of Congress and the chief justice of the Supreme Court, and joined them in condemning what many called the South American nation’s version of the US Capitol riots in Washington two years ago.
“The three powers of the republic, the defenders of democracy and the constitution, reject the terrorist acts and criminal, coup-mongering vandalism that occurred,” they said in a joint statement.
As the nation continued to come to grips with Sunday’s stunning violence, hundreds of people gathered along a major avenue in downtown Sao Paulo to defend Brazilian democracy and demand punishment for the people who stormed the halls of power a day earlier.
“I have not endured what I have in this life to see what I saw yesterday — my people, my country, divided in such a way,” said Edi Valladares, a 61-year-old teacher.
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