Conservative former President of Brazil Jair Bolsonaro, still recovering from a delicate 12-hour surgery, participated in a peaceful rally on Wednesday in Brasília calling for amnesty for the January 8 riot participants.
Bolsonaro was discharged from Brasília’s DF Star Hospital on Sunday, three weeks after he underwent a complex surgery in mid-April to treat an intestinal subocclusion caused by past surgeries he endured following a failed assassination attempt in September 2018. Bolsonaro’s medical team described the latest surgery as his “most complex” since the emergency surgery right after the assassination attempt.
Hours before he was discharged, Bolsonaro announced on social media his intention to attend Wednesday’s rally in Brasília to call for amnesty for the nearly 900 Brazilian men and women imprisoned for their participation in the January 8, 2023, riots. On that day, thousands of Bolsonaro supporters stormed the premises of Brazil’s Congress, Supreme Federal Tribunal (STF), and Planalto presidential palace, causing significant damage to the facilities, furniture, and priceless historical artifacts housed therein. No deaths and only minimal injuries were documented during the incident.
Bolsonaro stressed hours before his discharge that he would immediately resume his pro-amnesty agenda, which he had to suspend in April when he began experiencing severe abdominal pain at an event in the state of Rio Grande do Norte, leading to his hospitalization and urgent emergency transfer to Brasilia.
Although Bolsonaro’s medical team strongly advised him not to participate in Wednesday’s event, the former president accompanied about 4,000 of his followers at the pro-amnesty rally held in Brasília’s Plaza of the Three Powers, the same location of the January 8 riots. Bolsonaro, three days after he was discharged, delivered a brief speech in which he thanked his followers and stressed that, although “we are living through at the moment is very sad and painful, but we will not lose hope.”
“If we want democracy, freedom, a better homeland for everyone, we are all responsible for the future of the country. Today we know who we are, what we want and where we are going,” Bolsonaro said. “I am just an instrument. I am your employee. I have no obsession with power. I don’t know how some powerful people doing so much evil can sleep peacefully for a single night.”
Participants of the peaceful event expressed their support for an amnesty bill presented by lawmakers from Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party that calls for full amnesty to the January 8 participants. The participants also reportedly expressed their rejection of an “alternate amnesty” bill recently presented by Brazilian Senator Alessandro Vieira of the Brazilian Democratic Movement. The alternative bill, which reportedly has STF’s “agreement,” would not grant full amnesty to the January 8 participants and instead would slightly reduce prison sentences for those convicted depending on the charges while also calling greater penalties on those who “masterminded the coup plot.”
Bolsonaro stands accused by the STF alongside dozens others of allegedly orchestrating the January 8 riots as part of a broader “coup” plot that also called to poison current radical leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and overturn the results of the 2022 presidential election, which Bolsonaro narrowly lost against Lula.
“Amnesty is a political act and the competence of the Brazilian parliament. Parliament voted, nobody has to interfere in anything. You have to comply with the will of parliament, which represents the will of the majority of the Brazilian people,” Bolsonaro said.
As of January, Brazil’s top court has convicted more than 370 individuals for their involvement in the January 8 riots. The convicted men and women have received prison sentences ranging between 3 to 17.5 years. Bolsonaro has been highly critical of the sentences that the STF has so far issued.
Most notably, in early April, the former president referred to the case of hairdresser Débora Rodrigues dos Santos, who participated in the January 8 riots and used lipstick to write “you lost, sucker” on a statue outside the STF building during the riots. The woman, who denies having taken part in any violent action on that day, was sentenced in late April to 14 years in prison.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
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