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News > Latin America

Brazil: Attack on Free Lula Vigil Leaves Two Injured

  • Members of the Free Lula camp protest in Curitiba.

    Members of the Free Lula camp protest in Curitiba. | Photo: Reuters

Published 28 April 2018
Opinion

Gleisi Hoffmann says the attack "is the result of this constructed process of persecution against Lula."

Two persons have been taken to the hospital, with one of them said to be in serious condition, after a shooting at a vigil protesting the imprisonment of Brazil’s former president Luiz Inácio 'Lula' da Silva. Jefferson Lima de Menezes, a member of the Free Lula encampment in the southern city of Curitiba, Brazil was shot in the neck at approximately 4:00 a.m. local time Saturday. Another unnamed Lula supporter was injured by shrapnel during the incident.

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According to eyewitnesses, the occupants of a car, which had arrived near the camp at 2:00 a.m., shouted mottoes associated with Rio de Janeiro congressman and far right-wing presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro before gunshots were heard.

Following the attack, the Free Lula camp released a public statement denouncing the “attempted murder” and “state of emergency that harms their right to mobilize.”

“We will continue our activities, struggle, schedule, and debates organized as part of the vigil. It becomes even more impressive, with each passing day, how, despite his incarceration, former president Lula's public image gains moral force and complaints against his unjust imprisonment increase," they said while calling for swift action by police to find the culprits and bring them to justice.

Regina Cruz, president of the Unified Workers' Central one of the groups that aided in forming the encampment, has pledged to "maintain the camp" despite the attack and reinforce security.

Meanwhile, Worker’s party president and senator, Gleisi Hoffmann, said the attack "is the result of this constructed process of persecution against Lula, the Worker’s party, and the leftist movements."

As Lula continues to appeal his corruption conviction ahead of October's presidential elections, campaigning is being ramped up by Bolsonaro – a controversial figure who's been described as "a caricature” of United States President Donald Trump."

In 2016, during the impeachment process against former President Dilma Rousseff, Bolsonaro used his congressional speaking time not only to rally in favor of her removal but also to praise Carlos Brilhante Ustra, the colonel who headed the dictatorship's notorious torture program in the 1970s.

He cited Ustra as "the source of Dilma Rousseff's dread," referring to the fact that, as a young woman, she had been imprisoned for three years for being a leftist guerrilla and was tortured, including being electrocuted, under his watch.

Bolsonaro has also proposed restoring military rule and has been quoted as saying that Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet "should have killed more people." 

Despite his conviction and imprisonment for corruption, events that many legal experts and observers attribute to lawfare and a salacious mainstream media campaign, Lula has topped every 2018 electoral poll conducted by Vox Populi, Ibope, Datafolha, Data Poder 360, Instituto Parana, the National Confederation of Transportation/MDA and Ipsos.

Lula's two terms in office were marked by a slew of social programs, lifting millions of Brazilians out of poverty and removing the country from the United Nations World Hunger Map. He left office with a record approval rating of 83 percent in 2011, according to Datafolha.

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