{"id":19492,"date":"2018-10-23T01:24:28","date_gmt":"2018-10-23T01:24:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=19492"},"modified":"2018-10-23T01:24:28","modified_gmt":"2018-10-23T01:24:28","slug":"bolsonaro-wants-to-cleanse-brazil-of-left-wing-criminals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=19492","title":{"rendered":"Bolsonaro wants to ‘cleanse’ Brazil of left-wing ‘criminals’"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Sao Paulo<\/strong> – The frontrunner in Brazil’s presidential election<\/a>\u00a0– far right former army captain Jair Bolsonaro<\/a> – gave a fiery and confrontational speech to supporters on Sunday in which he said he would purge the country of left-wing “criminals”.<\/p>\n

“We are the majority. We are the real Brazil. Together, we will build a new nation,” he said. “These red criminals will be banished from our homeland.”<\/p>\n

The speech pleased supporters but sent a chilling message to political rivals and raised further concerns of how Bolsonaro would rule in Brazil.<\/p>\n

“Bolsonaro is doubling down on his campaign strategy,” said Matias Spektor, a professor of international relations at the Getulio Vargas Foundation in Sao Paulo. “This is an election about change and anger.”<\/p>\n

Brazil was ruled by a brutal and repressive military dictatorship from 1964 through 1985 during which hundreds of political opponents were murdered and thousands tortured.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Bolsonaro – an outspoken advocate of the military dictatorship, who has previously spoken in favour of torture and extrajudicial police killings and has a history of making disparaging remarks about women, the LGBT community and other minority groups – currently leads opinion polls and is expected win a comfortable victory during the October 28 presidential runoff against the Workers’ Party’s (PT) Fernando Haddad.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

“In the case of Bolsonaro (different from other candidates) we don’t know what kind of relationship he will establish with the democratic institutions,” said Carlos Melo, a professor of political science at S\u00e3o Paulo’s Insper business school.<\/p>\n

“In the very minimum, it creates a sense of insecurity.”<\/p>\n

Deeply-divided country<\/h2>\n

Brazil is bitterly divided and racked by increasing episodes of political violence<\/a>. Bolsonaro himself was the victim of a near fatal stabbing in September during a campaign rally.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Bolsonaro made Sunday’s 10-minute speech via mobile phone from his home in Rio de Janeiro. A video was transmitted live to thousands of supporters at a demonstration on Sao Paulo’s main thoroughfare Avenida Paulista. Supporters’ demonstrations were also held in Rio de Janeiro and other cities. Rallies against the far-right candidate were held a day earlier.<\/p>\n

Of Brazil’s popular former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva,\u00a0 who led opinion polls until he was barred from running due his imprisonment for a corruption conviction, Bolsonaro said: “You will rot in jail!” to which supporters were heard chanting “Legend! Legend! Legend!”<\/p>\n

“Haddad will be there with you soon, but not to visit,” Bolsonaro said of his centre-left opponent Haddad, who took over Lula’s candidacy.<\/p>\n

“You can get out of here! You won’t have any more chance in our homeland,” Bolsonaro.. “It will be a cleansing never seen in the history of Brazil.”<\/p>\n

After the speech, Hadded tweeted: “We must defend the democratic state of law. How will people feel safe if they threaten anyone who thinks otherwise?”<\/p>\n

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<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Demonstrators take part in a protest against Brazilian right-wing presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro in Sao Paulo, Brazil [Nelson Almedia\/AFP]\u00a0<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

PT congressman Paulo Pimenta called the speech “the hardest attack on Brazilian democracy” since the dictatorship ended in 1985.<\/span><\/p>\n

Bolsonaro also labelled the Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper “the biggest fake news in Brazil” , saying he would cut government advertising revenue to the newspaper.<\/span><\/p>\n

Last week, the newspaper published<\/a> an article alleging companies and Brazilian businessmen were financing a fake news network the messaging application Whatsapp to favour the far-right candidate. Police have opened a probe into the allegations.<\/p>\n

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<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Supporters of Brazilian far-right presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro attend a rally in Copacabana beach, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil [Carl de Souza\/AFP]\u00a0<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Separately on Sunday, a video of Bolsonaro’s politician son, Eduardo – who was recently re-elected to congress – from July went viral in which he spoke about closing Brazil’s Supreme Court with “a corporal and a soldier”, if the court blocked his father’s victory.<\/p>\n

Court ministers including court president Dias Toffoli hit back on Monday, calling an attack on the judiciary an “attack on democracy”.<\/p>\n

Bolsonaro blasted the comment as that of someone who “should go to a psychiatrist” and said he warned his son, local media reported.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sao Paulo – The frontrunner in Brazil’s presidential election\u00a0– far right former army captain Jair Bolsonaro – gave a fiery and confrontational speech to supporters on Sunday in which he said he would purge the country of left-wing “criminals”. “We are the majority. We are the real Brazil. Together, we will build a new nation,”…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":19493,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19492\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/19493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}