A few days after the anniversary of the 6 January events in Washington DC, thousands of Jair Bolsonaro supporters stormed Brazil’s congress, its presidential palace and supreme court to protest against the inauguration of Lula da Silva. They were evicted within hours, but that they got so far – in the face of a heavy military police presence – made worldwide news. Here are pictures of events as they unfolded:
3:30 p.m. local time: Protesters dressed in Brazil’s national green and yellow colours are repelled with tear gas outside Planalto Palace, official residence of the Brazilian president. Da Silva, 77, himself was not in the city yesterday, visiting flood victims in the state of São Paulo. He was elected in October with 51 per cent of the vote.
4 p.m. local time: Protesters find a way of scaling the Planalto Palace, breaking a window to enter the building. Hundreds then follow.
A crashed police car lies outside Brazil’s National Congress as protestors continue to scale and enter the building. Alexandre de Moraes, Brazil’s supreme court judge, said such a security breach ‘could only have happened with the acquiescence, or even direct involvement, of public security and intelligence authorities’.
Approximately 5 p.m. local time: Security forces storm the Planalto Palace in pursuit of protestors who broke into the building, vandalising many of the rooms and interiors. According to some reports, as many as 3,000 protesters were involved.
A member of Brazil’s security forces aims at the Planalto Palace. Protesters were said to be armed with some reported to have stolen guns from within the presidential palace.
Images showing damage inside the Planalto Palace after all protestors had been removed from the building. The photographs and videos show upturned, broken tables and chairs, battered computers and printers and reems of scattered paper, as well as damaged artwork and dirty footprints throughout the building.
1) Imagens do ataque terrorista divulgadas pelo Planalto. pic.twitter.com/Vyy9mC7iCb
— Carlos Alberto Jr. (@cajr1569) January 8, 2023
A policeman inspects damage to the Planalto Palace. The authorities restored control around 6:30 p.m. local time. Local curfews have been imposed. President Lula inspected the damage overnight.
And now the big question: how did this happen? How, after the 6 January protests in Washington, was the security defence not in place? ‘They did absolutely nothing,’ said Mr. da Silva of the military police, which is seen as a hotbed of Bolsonaro support. Ibaneis Rocha, the governor of Brasilia, has been removed for 90 days over security failings. More inquiries follow.
Bolsonaro, who still describes himself as president of Brazil in his Twitter biography, said: ‘Peaceful demonstrations, as allowed by law, are part of democracy. But vandalisation and invasions of public buildings – as occurred today, as well as those practised by the left in 2013 and 2017 – are not part of this rule. Throughout my term, I have always acted been within the four pillars of the Constitution: respecting and defending the laws, democracy, transparency and our sacred freedom.’
President Biden, and a number of other international politicians, also condemned the violence.
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