After the violent election campaign in Brazil, many disturbing attacks will continue

SAO PAULO (Reuters) – After the Brazilian presidential campaign that has seen political violence eclipse the political debate, many fear that the attacks will continue after the next election on Sunday of the far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro.

Bolsonaro supporters in recent weeks have threatened to harm Supreme Court judges and have physically attacked opposition journalists and voters.

Violence was also blamed on supporters of Bolsonaro's opponent, Fernando Haddad of the Workers' Party (PT), but to a much lesser extent.

The tense political climate prevailing in Brazil has been likened by some to US divisions, where several high-profile opponents of President Donald Trump have received homemade bombs in the mail this week.

But the situation in Brazil is much more dangerous, according to analysts, because it already suffers from extreme violence, often without consequences for the authors.

According to government data, nearly 64,000 murders were recorded last year, but less than 10% of homicides are the subject of charges.

Bolsonaro, who keeps a double-digit lead in all polls, was himself stabbed almost deadly during an election rally last month. He is still recovering, but the episode only reinforces his aggressive rhetoric, combining verbal attacks against political enemies and vows to violently fight crime and pursue cases of corruption against opponents.

"Your PT team, you will have the civilian and military police with legal support to enforce the law on your back," he said in a video broadcast to supporters at demonstrations last Sunday. "These delinquent Reds will be banished from our homeland."

He has repeatedly said that he does not tolerate the acts of violence perpetrated by his supporters, but analysts say that his daily rants on social media platforms have negative consequences.

"Bolsonaro, because of his rhetoric for violence and his aggressive campaign, has opened Pandora's box on political violence in a country that is already extremely violent," said Rafael Alcadipani, a public security expert in the country. Getulio Vargas University of Sao Paulo. .

"If people thought that Brazil had extremely high levels of street violence in normal times, imagine what it would be like under a president who is aggressively pushing violence among police and against political opponents?"

ATTACKS ON THE MEDIA

Bolsonaro's attacks on the media as a result of aggressive reporting he calls "false news" have also cooled newsrooms that have faced a resurgence of threats and physical violence.

The group of Brazilian investigative journalists Abraji said since January that 64 journalists covering the campaign had been physically assaulted and 82 others had been targeted in hate campaigns online.

In comparison, 40 US journalists covering all subjects were physically assaulted during this period, according to the US Press Freedom Tracker database run by more than two dozen press freedom groups.

Bolsonaro's supporters have been blamed for most of the attacks in Brazil, said Abraji, while supporters of the PT were responsible for a smaller fraction.

Folha de S.Paulo, the largest Brazilian newspaper, has been inundated with hundreds of thousands of threats, including one targeting the six-year-old son of a journalist who discovered allegations of illegality in the use of WhatsApp by the Bolsonaro campaign to spread false information.

The federal police are investigating a retired army colonel who has repeatedly threatened the Supreme Court justices in widely shared videos, warning them not to rule against Bolsonaro.

Supreme Court Justice Carmen Lucia said the attacks were a threat to democracy, saying this week that "aggression against all justice is an attack on the entire court as a whole". institution".

Gross rhetoric

Bolsonaro, a 63-year-old former army captain, is a staunch defender of the 1964-1985 Brazilian military regime and named one of the most famous torturers of that period, Colonel Carlos Ustra, as a personal hero.

As president, he says that he would encourage the police to kill suspected criminals with abandonment. He wants to make gun control more flexible so that civilians can defend themselves and sometimes suggests that violence can also solve Brazil's political problems.

At a campaign rally, he seized a cameraman tripod, propped it up like a rifle and shouted in a microphone: "We're going to shoot down all those supporters of the Workers Party!"

According to his campaign, his rhetoric simply turns to politically incorrect jokes intended to irritate his leftist presidential rival, Fernando Haddad.

Bolsonaro has seduced tens of millions of Brazilian voters with its inflammatory and anti-establishment stance, citizens who are tired of being the target of a rampant street crime and a endemic political corruption that he's committed to eradicating.

Matheus Ferreira, an 18-year-old Sao Paulo-based candy stand vendor from a violent slum, said the tense situation filled him with fear, but not much more than he faces daily.

"I will vote for Bolsonaro," he said this week. "If it could make Brazil safer, it would have been worth the risk."

(GRAPHIC: Election in Brazil – tmsnrt.rs/2Ixe0NI)