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SÃO PAULO—Thousands of protesters supporting Brazil’s former President
Jair Bolsonaro
stormed Congress buildings and those of the country’s Supreme Court in the capital Brasília Sunday, many calling for military intervention to remove
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva,
the leftist leader who took office last week.
Television images showed protesters breaking windows inside Congress and swarming up the ramp at the entrance to the presidential palace, many dressed in Brazil’s green and yellow national colors, as riot police arrived on the scene.
Mr. da Silva, who was some 500 miles away from the capital on Sunday visiting flood victims in the state of São Paulo, called the protesters “fanatic fascists,” and decreed a state of federal intervention in Brasília, an emergency measure by which the federal government temporarily replaces state authorities in charge of public security.
The 77-year-old leader, a standard-bearer of the Latin American left, accused Brasília’s military police of not acting to contain the protesters, many of whom had marched for more than an hour to get to the presidential palace. “They did absolutely nothing,” said Mr. da Silva of the military police, which counts many supporters of Mr. Bolsonaro among its ranks.
An outspoken former army captain and friend of Donald Trump, Mr. Bolsonaro has yet to publicly concede he lost the election, which Mr. da Silva won in October with 51% of the vote.
Mr. Bolsonaro, whose unfounded claims of election fraud ahead of the vote polarized the country’s electorate, left Brazil for Orlando, Fla., shortly before Mr. da Silva was inaugurated on Jan. 1, refusing to hand over the presidential sash to his rival.
“This is exactly what the ex-president was encouraging his supporters to do,” Mr. da Silva said of Sunday’s riots.
Leftist leaders from around Latin America condemned the acts, and offered support to Mr. da Silva’s administration.
“The Brazilian government has our full support in the face of this cowardly and vile attack on democracy,” Chilean President
Gabriel Boric
said in a statement posted on Twitter. Colombia’s President
Gustavo Petro,
as well as government officials from Argentina and Mexico released messages in support of Mr. da Silva’s administration.
Ibaneis Rocha, governor of the federal district in which Brasília is located, called the protests an “antidemocratic riot,” writing earlier on Twitter that he was taking all measures to contain the protesters and punish those responsible. He added that he had fired the federal district’s public security secretary, Anderson Torres, Mr. Bolsonaro’s former justice minister and a federal police chief, who Brazilian press reported to be in the U.S. Sunday. Mr. Torres couldn’t be reached for comment.
Television images showed police helicopters hovering over Brazil’s presidential palace as protesters gathered on the ramp to the building’s entrance, the same ramp that Mr. da Silva walked up a week ago, a symbolic act of his inauguration.
Write to Samantha Pearson at samantha.pearson@wsj.com
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