As Brazil enters the final stretch of its campaign season, a spate of politically motivated death threats, physical attacks, and killings across the country are raising fears of more widespread violence after the Oct. 2 election
s Brazil enters the final stretch of its campaign season, a spate of politically motivated death threats, physical attacks, and killings across the country are raising fears of more widespread violence after the Oct. 2 election., known as “Lula,” has widened his lead over right-wing incumbent Jair Bolsonaro in recent polls in the most polarized election since the end of Brazil’s military dictatorship in 1985.
“This is not so common in Brazil,” Feliciano Guimarães, the academic director at the Brazilian Center of International Relations in Rio de Janeiro, says about the recent uptick in attacks. “Although you have always had political violence near elections, it was very fragmented and more about local issues than national motivations.” And beyond the alarming trend of recent weeks, he says, “I think the challenge is yet to come.
In a recent survey by Datafolha, a prominent Brazilian polling firm, 40% of respondents said they believed there was a “high likelihood” of political violence during the election, and 9% of respondentsof such violence would keep them from voting. This fear was twice as high among Lula supporters compared to Bolsonaro supporters.
Supporters of Brazil's former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who is running for re-election, cheer during a campaign rally in Sao Paulo, Sept. 24.three years after the nation’s top court annulled his 2017 conviction for money laundering and corruption, which carried a sentence of 10 years in prison.
When he was questioned about his role inciting the violence during a Sept. 24 television debate, Bolsonaro shrugged it off: “Trying to hold me responsible for this violence is not serious journalism.”
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