President Jair Bolsonaro denounced on Friday a police operation against businessmen who support him, believing that freedom of expression was under attack and that the Brazil was “on the road to dictatorship”.
Searches targeted several businessmen supporting Jair Bolsonaro on Tuesday after revelations in the press that they had mentioned a possible coup if the far-right president was not re-elected in October.
Searches and blockages of social networks
Bolsonaro claimed that “the eight businessmen came very close” to being arrested and that the ongoing investigation was an attempt to muzzle his supporters. “Brazil is on the road to dictatorship. This is how dictatorships start today. You lose (your freedom) little by little, then one day you realize that you are completely tied up,” he told Jovem Pan radio station.
Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, the new head of Brazil’s top electoral court and a frequent target of attacks from the Bolsonaro camp, issued warrants for search to the federal police who would target several of these businessmen and ordered the blocking of their accounts on social networks.
Leaked messages
The Metropoles news site reported last week that the latter had “openly defended a coup” if Jair Bolsonaro was not re-elected against the left-wing ex-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, known as Lula, leader of the Workers’ Party (PT), leading in the polls.
The article cites leaked messages from a WhatsApp chat group in which members of the group say they “prefer a coup on the return of the PT” and that “the blood of the victims will become the blood of the heroes”.
Among them the billionaire Luciano Hang, 59, whose fortune is estimated at 4.8 billion dollars by Forbes magazine, shouted Thursday for “censorship” after the blocking of his Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and TikTok accounts , where it is followed by millions of people. “This week it was business leaders, tomorrow it could be YOU,” he wrote in one of his latest posts on twitter.
Several of these businessmen have denied wanting to undermine democracy: “I have never fomented any coup d’etat. I stand for freedom and democracy,” Hang said in a statement released by his company.