It was the Brazilian Capitol Hill. It had been in the air for weeks, but few believed they could really witness the exact same scenes: exactly two years after the assault on Congress in Washington and exactly one week after the inauguration of the new president Lula, hundreds of Bolsonarist fanatics took storming the heart of Brazilian institutions, in the capital Brasilia, raiding – practically undisturbed – the seats of the national Parliament, of the government and of the Supremo Tribunal Federal (STF, the equivalent of our Constitutional Court).
The facts began in the mid-afternoon, and the forces of order only late in the evening they managed to evacuate the buildings, also communicating the first 200 arrests. But many more will follow: the demonstrators have devastated everything possible, including some pieces of historical heritage, such as the bust of Rui Barbosa (member of the first Brazilian Constituent Assembly) and the carpet of Princess Isabel, managing to climb up to the floor where they find the offices of President Lula and his staff.
The President he was away in Araraquara, in the state of Sao Paulo, where heavy rains have caused damage and victims in recent days. But informed of the facts, he improvised a press conference announcing a tough fist against those responsible, "who will all be identified and punished in an exemplary way", and also alluding to the responsibilities of outgoing president Bolsonaro, who since he lost the elections (October 30 ) closed himself in silence and retired to Florida, but he is suspected by many of having encouraged the revolt, and again yesterday he only mildly distanced himself, returning Lula's accusations to the sender.
Bolsonaro on social media still presents himself as president of Brazil and on 1 January he did not participate in the traditional passage of the presidential sash (the equivalent of our little bell): an unprecedented institutional snub, just as it is yesterday's vandalism was unprecedented. "Such a thing had not even been seen in the worst years of the military dictatorship, in the 70s", said Lula who immediately proceeded to remove the police chief of Brasilia, Anderson Torres, who will be replaced with a sort of commissioner great for safety.
The figure of Torres is central to the story, and does nothing but fuel the suspicions of an organized conspiracy, with the approval of Bolsonaro himself: the police officer, who returned to his post in Brasilia after having been Minister of Justice in the previous government, allegedly met the former president in Miami in recent days, where Bolsonaro is experiencing a kind of exile, given that for some accusations dating back to the wicked management of the pandemic he would also risk arrest now that he no longer has immunity, and also for this reason he would be considering applying for Italian citizenship.
Some videos, in which the police can be seen clearly escorting the fanatical procession, instead of hindering him, they seem to endorse the thesis of a director, as had been the case with Trump for the events of January 2021, so much so that it is no coincidence that the US House Commission of Inquiry, after a long investigation, asked to indict him.
Mindful of this, the main Brazilian TV, Globo, did not mince words in commenting on the assault live, speaking openly of “coup”, “conspiracy”, “terrorism”. Lula himself was very harsh: in announcing the decree of "intervenção federal na segurança do Distrito Federal" (whereby the government takes over the reins of security, replacing the State of Brasilia, moreover governed by a Bolsonarista), he reiterated that " if someone from the federal government in Brasilia facilitated all this, he too will be punished”.
"It is evident that there was incompetence or even worse bad faith on the part of the police force", Lula did not hesitate to say, alluding to the procession actually escorted by the policemen, who only intervened with tear gas once the damage had been done. In the evening Lula wanted to give a strong signal in defense of democracy and he immediately went to the site of the assault, announcing an emergency meeting today in Brasilia with all the ministers and governors of the other states.
In the meantime, civil society has also taken action, deeply indignant and disturbed by what happened in the capital: on social media it has been opened the page "Contracoup Brasil", a profile to report with names and surnames the vandals identified in the various videos that circulate on the net, in which they show themselves without problems with their faces uncovered. The page, during the Italian night, had already exceeded 300 followers, to the point that Instagram took care of blocking posts from a certain moment on. But in the past it hadn't prevented years and years of fake news from poisoning Brazil too.
