Brazilian Authorities Response to Jan. 8 Riots Still Raise Questions

Supporters of Brazilian former President Jair Bolsonaro clash with the police during a demonstration outside the Planalto Palace in Brasilia on Jan. 8, 2023. Evaristo Sa/AFP via Getty Images

Commentary

After more than three months, questions continue to emerge over the “assault” on government buildings in Brazil’s capital city on Jan. 8.

Army general Gonçalves Dias is the head of Brazil’s Institutional Security Bureau (GSI), which advises the president on defence and security matters and handles presidential security.

However, Dias resigned after a CNN television network broadcast leaked CCTV images in which he displayed an attitude of passive collaboration with the invaders who vandalised the presidential palace.

The images displayed by CNN Brazil are compelling and appear to show that the alleged attacks, which the Brazilian government has labelled a coup, were carried out with the complicity of government agents in the service of the Lula administration.

J.R. Guzzo, who was for 15 years the editor-in-chief of Veja, Brazil’s leading current affairs magazine, commented that the whole ordeal seemed very strange from the beginning.

“Attempted ‘military coup?’ It could not be because the Armed Forces were in favor of Lula and against the protesters—the proof is that they lied to them and joined the police to put in jail those who were in front of the barracks in Brasília. It’s the very opposite: the recorded footage shows an army general, and supreme head of the government’s security services, passively staying among the invaders while his subordinates offered them courtesies and bottles of water.”

Security forces confront supporters of Brazilian former President Jair Bolsonaro entering Planalto Presidential Palace in Brasilia on Jan. 8, 2023. Ton Molina/AFP via Getty Images

Everything became clearer when Dias was fired from office on the very day CNN released those videos.

If he didn’t do anything wrong, why then was he fired? And if he is not responsible for anything, what was he then doing inside the presidential palace during that attack?

At the very least, there is enough evidence to say that the Brazilian authorities did nothing to prevent those invasions, despite knowing in advance that they would happen.

Missing Investigations, Questionable Arrests

Of course, the crimes committed on Jan. 8 did not interest the Brazilian opposition.

They served only for Lula to play the victim’s card, which is why he spent the last three months fighting to prevent the opening of a joint parliamentary committee (CPMI) to investigate what happened that day.

Once a CPMI is started, it becomes endowed with full powers of investigation.

The final result may be forwarded by Congress to the public prosecution, which is free, in this case, to decide whether or not to initiate civil or criminal action against the parties involved.

As one might expect, the government claims that its president “did not know” anything.

But if Lula didn’t know, why fight to prevent this CPMI from being created? He has negotiated positions, made threats, and even used the President of the Senate to violate deadlines and legal duties, all in a desperate attempt to bury the commission.

Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva speaks during the inauguration ceremony of the new Banco do Brasil President Tarciana Medeiros in Brasilia, Brazil, on Jan. 16, 2023. Adriano Machado/Reuters

Further, the Brazilian Supreme Court has also played an equally devastating role.

Justice Alexandre Moraes has arrested 1,400 people for these invasions in Brasília, keeping 200 of them incarcerated to this day.

He began a trial of the accused for “lots” of 100 or 200 people at a time. Many of those citizens arrested did exactly what that army general was caught in the cameras doing—entering the presidential palace with Brazil’s flag on their backs.

The lawyers of those who are arrested by Justice Moraes have been barred from defending their clients.

Some of these arrested individuals were not even present at the scene of the crime but have been arrested and forced to wear ankle bracelets. They have already served—even before being tried—more than half of the maximum sentence for the offence of which they are accused.

As the editorial board of Revista Oeste points out,

“There is nothing murkier in Brazil’s judicial history than the Supreme Court’s investigation into the facts of Jan. 8—in fact, a depressing spectacle of revenge, violation of the law, denial of rights, and the logic of dictatorship justices. There is no investigation at all ... As in a Soviet court case, those whom the Supreme Court and the government want to convict will be convicted.”

What Really Happened?

What we are seeing, with greater evidence, is that there was some form of an attack on democracy by the ruling classes in Brazil.

Raul Jungmann, who served as Brazil’s defence and public security minister from 2016 to 2018, explains that it is “impossible” to storm these heavily secured government buildings in Brasília without a “purposeful security breach.”

Jungmann, who was for a time the leader of Brazil’s Popular Socialist Party, went so as far as to say that “without the collaboration of internal security, nobody would have crossed the main door.”

Supporters of Brazil's former President Jair Bolsonaro demonstrate against President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva outside Brazil’s National Congress in Brasilia, Brazil, on Jan. 8, 2023. Adriano Machado/Reuters

The Lula administration and its partners in the judiciary are inflicting a heavy blow on Brazil’s democratic institutions.

In an attempt to evade any responsibility, Lula is refusing to allow a parliamentary committee to investigate what happened on Jan. 8.

Arguably, Lula knows very well that he does not run any kind of risk with the Supreme Court. The powerful judicial oligarchs will never judge anything he does or will do, whatever the crime.

Whoever does not want to investigate the facts is the one who has something to hide.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.