Committee approves final report on January 8 investigation

The congressional hearing committee created to investigate the January 8 riots approved on Wednesday by 20-11 the final report submitted by Senator Eliziane Gama.

As The Brazilian Report has shown, the report places blame for the riots solely on former far-right President Jair Bolsonaro and some of his closest public allies, a fair but vastly incomplete assessment that does not address the political protagonism of the military, nor negligence by members of the Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva administration that facilitated the riots — such as the decision by Defense Minister José Múcio Monteiro not to dismantle the camp with putschist demonstrators nearby the Army’s headquarters, from which the crowd of vandals left on January 8.

Congressman Arthur Maia, the committee’s chair, agreed with the thesis in the report, by saying during today’s final hearing that the Armed Forces, “if they were called at any moment to participate in that [a coup], they said no — they demonstrated love and respect for democracy.”

The far-right opposition, who pushed for the creation of the select committee in the first place (in an attempt to mislead the public about what happened), was doomed from the beginning, as the Lula government managed to form a majority and also to pick the rapporteur, a key position that helps conduct proceedings. 

Nonetheless, far-right lawmakers presented an “alternative” report with their own conclusions on the January 8 events. The document, which comes close to a piece of fiction, argues that the rioters were merely “vandals” rather than seditious agents. This report was not put to a vote.

The alternative report also compares the January 8 riots with the 1933 Reichstag fire in Germany, arguing that the Lula administration was negligent with the putschist camps because this would allow the government to similarly turn opinion against the rioters and to “criminalize” the right-wing movement — notwithstanding the fact that the camps were full of very public supporters of Mr. Bolsonaro and were set up during his administration.

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