What is happening in Brazil?

On Sunday, more than 100 buses with roughly 4,000 Bolsonaro supporters arrived in the capital of Brasília for a planned protest over the presidential election results. However, just hours into the protest, people managed to break police barriers and stormed Brazil’s top political institutions, where they defaced government buildings.

Crowds of protesters draped in Brazilian flags and wearing Brazil soccer shirts were filmed breaking windows and destroying furniture, while parts of the Congress building were left flooded after the sprinkler system was set off. Newly inaugurated President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a leftist widely known as Lula, was forced to call upon emergency powers to quell the rioters. Two police cars were damaged in the riot, which continued for three hours.

The next day, police shut down an encampment that was held outside Brazil’s military headquarters, where demonstrators settled following the previous day’s uprising. Of the 1,500 arrested, 300 were detained on Sunday and another 1,200 were detained on Monday.

In a show of support for Lula, tens of thousands of people took to the streets of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro demanding those involved in the uprising be punished. “These people need to be punished, the people who ordered it need to be punished, those who gave money for it need to be punished,” a woman protesting the riot told Associated Press.