Top Brazil minister: State may seize children from election protesters
Brazil Superior Court of Justice Minister Luis Felipe Salomão signed an order last week allowing Child Services to confiscate the children of citizens protesting last month’s presidential election.
Widespread claims of fraud in Brazil’s presidential election on October 30th in which Left-wing ex-convict Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva ousted incumbent President Jair Bolsonaro sparked large-scale protests across the country. The protests are entering their fourth week.
Lula, who spent 580 days in prison for corruption, won the most votes in the country’s history, but also by the narrowest margin for a presidential election in the country’s modern history. Many Brazilians are contesting the legitimacy of the election, citing independent analyses by electoral authorities.
Protests erupted across the country following the results, with hundreds of thousands of Brazilian citizens blocking roads and even surrounding army barracks as they demand military intervention in election fraud. Law enforcement personnel have reportedly joined in the protests.
Last week’s protests were the largest yet, with three million citizens clogging roads Tuesday in the capital Brasilía alone. In Rio de Janeiro, about 500,000 protested in front of the old Ministry of Defense and demanded military intervention. Additional hundreds of thousands protested elsewhere throughout the country.
With the government so far unable to quash the uprising despite threats of prison and fines, Minister Salomão has signed an order allowing the children of protesters to be seized.
“[S]ince the day after the second round of this year's presidential elections, groups who contest the result of the election began to occupy spaces to protest and ask for measures to revert the calculated result or to prevent [Lula] from taking office on January 1, 2023,” the order begins.
Salomão then cited Supreme Court Justice and Superior Electoral Court (TSE) President Alexandre de Moraes who decreed that protesters be met with criminal charges for “non-compliance and disrespect” for the election results. Moraes also slammed demonstrators for “causing a very serious obstruction of traffic on highways and public roads” as well as “urban transport, treatment of water for human consumption, public safety, supply of electricity, medicine [and] food.”
The order complains that despite government threats, people “did not completely retreat” and instead “turned to military zones – especially around the barracks of the Brazilian Army – setting up camps.”
“Therefore, in addition to the possible crimes that may be committed by the alleged demonstrators,” writes Salomão, “attention is drawn to the presence of children and adolescents in these movements.” The minister claimed that the “potentially unhealthy conditions of such camps should awaken the concern of public agents responsible for the protection of children and youth.”
As examples, he cited videos where camping tents were seen “floating in mud after heavy rains”; food was prepared outdoors in public areas “together with the pollution coming from nearby vehicles and the rainwater invading the places where people eat.”
While in general, Salomão acknowledged, a complaint about child endangerment must first be brought to open a case with Child Services, none need be brought here.
Instead, he ordered Child Services to identify where protesters may have set up facilities such as camps, tents, kitchens, etc. and check whether there are children and adolescents on the premises. If so, the case officers are to determine the state of “hygiene, food and other elements that may jeopardize their rights, including attendance at school, the right to leisure and housing, the right not to be subjected to any form of negligence, exploitation or degrading treatment under any circumstances.”
If an official can determine any of the above to be true, they are to “adopt all appropriate measures” with “support from local security forces."
Prior to the election, Salomão suspended the transfer of YouTube monetization payments to conservative channels due to “election misinformation.”
