'Flowering of hate': bitter election brings wave of political violence to Brazil | World news


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The two contenders in Brazil's bitterly-contested presidential race. Jair Bolsonaro's beatings, a knife attack and a murder.

Supporters of the paratrooper – the victim of a botched assassination attempt last month – have also reportedly been targeted with violence.

An investigation by independent journalism group Agencia Bolsonaro, who gives a 16-point lead over his leftist opponent, Fernando Haddad, ahead of the second round runoff on 28 October.

Agencia Pública said bolsonaristas were behind 50 separate attacks since 30 September. In the same period, six Bolsonaro supporters were assaulted, the report found.

"There is a flowering of hate that," said a reporter who was attacked by Bolsonaro supporters in the northeastern city of Recife. "I am frightened because it could be anyone now."

Vote frustration over spiraling violence and eye-watering corruption – an explosion of inflammatory fake news – mean an unusually toxic atmosphere has enveloped this year's election.

Activists say that online threats have become so popular, while videos of soccer fans singing "Bolsonaro will kill queers" have spread terror among LGBT people.

Several attacks were reported on Sunday, when Bolsonaro secured his resounding victory in the first round election.

The 40-year-old female reporter was assaulted at knife point when she went to vote, when two Bolsonaro supporters spotted the journalist's credentials hanging from her neck.

One of the men, who was waving a knife and wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the candidate's face, grabbed her arm and told her: "When my commander wins the election you will be in the press."

"The other one said, 'Let's take her off and rape her,' and the one with the knife, said, 'No,' Let's cut her, '" said the journalist, who asked to withhold her name reporting the attack.





A Brazilian reporter who was roughed up by Bolsonaro fans in Recife



A Brazilian reporter who was roughed up by Bolsonaro supporters in Recife Photograph: Sérgio Bernardo / JC Imagem

She was scratched with the knife across her face, before the two men ran off when a passing motorist blasted her horn.

Hours later, in the coastal city of Salvador, Romualdo da Costa, 63, a master in the Afro-Brazilian martial art of capoeira, was stabbed to death after a row over politics, police said.

Da Costa had said he was in favor of Bolsonaro, BBC Brasil reported.

Bolsonaro shrugged off the attacks. "A guy with my T-shirt goes too far. What has it got to do with me? "He told reporters on Wednesday. "I am in control of the millions and millions of people who support me. The violence comes from the other side. "

Later he changed tack, tweeting that he did not want votes from "those who practice violence against people who do not vote for me".

Haddad also condemned the attacks. "We have to put an end to this violence," he told reporters.

Agencia Pública reported that one woman was arrested and left naked in a cell after police in São Paulo caught her spraying the anti-Bolsonaro slogan "Ele Não"(" Not him ") we have a wall. Police officers overwhelmingly support Bolsonaro, who has promised to give them more leeway to shoot suspects.

Agencia Pública also reported that a university professor in Bahia state was arrested after running a man selling Bolsonaro T-shirts.

The violent mood has played on the internet in the form of a social media threat, a tsunami of fake news, and an online game featuring a cartoon Bolsonaro who attacks feminists, leftists and political opponents.

Prosecutors have launched an investigation into the game, Bolsomito 2K18, from which description reads: "Defeat the communistic evils in this politically incorrect game and be the hero that will free the nation from misery."

Fatima Arruda, 36, a black, LGBT Brazilian activist who lives in Germany and has 120,000 followers on her Facebook page, said threats against her have multiplied since the campaign began.

"I'm lucky I do not live in Brazil. If I was there I would think something bad would have happened to me, "she said.

Bolsonaro himself is notorious for repeatedly making homophobic and sexist comments. Earlier this month he was ordered to pay a £ 10,000 fine. He is appealing the ruling,

Crisnando Lima, 26, has a gay design student in the city of Teresina said: "When Bolsonaro wins, we will start beating up gays."

Brazil's poisonous political climate was made apparent in March, when Marielle Franco, a gay, black Rio de Janeiro city councilor, was murdered along with her driver, in which investigators believed was a targeted assassination.

A week before the election, two candidates from Bolsonaro 's Social Liberal Party, posed grinning with the broken remains of a replica street sign bearing Franco' s name, which had been hung outside Rio 's city hall by her supporters.

The two men were later elected to Congress and Rio de Janeiro's state legislature.

Meanwhile Franco's Sister Anielle, 34, has described how she was threatened by her last year after picking up her two-year-old daughter from school. "Bullshit leftist," they screamed at her, "get out of here, feminist."

She told the Guardian that she had been scarred, but never in person. "There were so many insults I could not remember them all," she said.

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