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RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil: Tens of thousands of Brazilians protested Sunday against “shameless” lawmakers seeking an amnesty that could benefit former president Jair Bolsonaro, while pushing to shield themselves from criminal charges.
Bolsonaro was sentenced last week to 27 years in jail for plotting a coup, and within days, the conservative-majority Congress had fast-tracked an amnesty bill that could include the far-right leader.
“No amnesty,” crowds roared in dozens of Brazilian cities, holding up signs and wearing stickers reading “Shameless Congress.”
Protesters were also outraged by what they dubbed the “Banditry Bill” passed this week. The law would require Congress to vote by secret ballot to give the go-ahead for one its own to be charged or arrested.
“This protection they seek is to camouflage corruption, impunity,” said Giovana Araujo, 27, a psychology student clad in a blue bikini top in the sweltering heat at a “musical protest” on Rio de Janeiro’s Copacabana beach.
Iconic octogenarians of Brazilian music, Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, and Chico Buarque, took to a truck-mounted stage alongside palm trees to sing resistance songs from Brazil’s dictatorship era.
Tens of thousands sang along as a blow-up doll of Bolsonaro wearing black-and-white prison stripes bobbed next to one of US President Donald Trump, who has punished Brazil with tariffs in retaliation for the prosecution of his ally.
Veloso, 83, said musicians “could not fail to respond to the horrors that have been creeping in around us.”
The artists “were literally boycotted during the military dictatorship, and seeing them here is synonymous with resistance,” said Araujo, describing their appearance as “revolutionary.”
“Once again, artists are mobilizing the people to demand justice in this country,” said Yasmin Aimee Coelho Pessoa, a 20-year-old sociology student, with gold glitter around her eyes.

‘Choking point’ 

In the megalopolis Sao Paulo, protesters unfurled a giant Brazilian flag, in response to a US flag displayed at a pro-Bolsonaro march earlier this month.
The Political Debate Monitor at the University of Sao Paulo estimated crowds of 42,000 in the economic heartland, and a similar figure in Rio de Janeiro — the biggest turnout for the left since President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was re-elected in 2022.
Lula’s razor-thin victory set off a series of political crises that still reverberate in Brazil today.
Bolsonaro was convicted of plotting to bar Lula from taking office, in a plan that judges said only failed due to a lack of support from military top brass.
Congress is pushing to offer amnesty to 700 of his supporters who were convicted of storming government buildings a week after Lula took office in January 2023, a bill that could include a pardon for Bolsonaro.
Further stoking public anger, lawmakers passed the bill to boost their immunity, citing the need for protection against judicial overreach.
“The left is reorganizing in the face of all these atrocities. And I feel like we’ve reached that choking point — it’s stuck in our throats, ready to come out as a scream,” said Henrique Marques, a 42-year-old environmental engineer, who was among thousands protesting in the capital Brasilia.
Several deputies took to social media to apologize for voting for the controversial “Shielding Bill” saying they had faced pressure to do so in a fragmented parliament.
One state deputy, Pedro Campos, said he had voted for the bill to “prevent the boycott of important agendas” for the government of President Lula.
Both bills face an uphill battle in the Senate. Lula has vowed to veto the amnesty bill.
He also said the “Shielding Bill” was not the kind of “serious matter” that lawmakers should be dealing with.
 

MANILA: Hundreds of families sheltered in schools and evacuation centers on Monday as heavy rains and gale-force winds from Super Typhoon Ragasa lashed the northern Philippines and southern Taiwan.
The typhoon, named Nando by the Philippine weather bureau PAGASA, is gaining strength as it proceeds on a collision course with southern China, and was expected to make landfall over the Philippines’ Babuyan Islands by around midday.
The sparsely populated islands lie about 740 kilometers (460 miles) south of Taiwan in the Luzon Strait.
As of 8:00 a.m. (0000 GMT), maximum sustained winds of 215 kilometers per hour were reported at the storm’s center, with gusts reaching up to 265 kph as it moved toward the archipelago nation, the national weather service said.
“We are now experiencing strong winds here in northern Cagayan,” provincial disaster chief Rueli Rapsing told AFP, saying they were prepared for “the worst.”
“Since the super typhoon will traverse Calayan, we are very focused on that area,” he said of a town in the far north province.
In Taiwan, small-scale evacuations were ongoing in mountainous areas near Pingtung, local fire department officer James Wu told AFP.
“What worries us more is that the damage could be similar to what happened during Typhoon Koinu two years ago,” he added, describing a storm that saw utility poles collapse and sheet-metal roofs sent flying into the air.
Schools and government offices were closed Monday in the Manila region and across 29 Philippine provinces in anticipation of heavy rainfall.
Government weather specialist John Grender Almario said Sunday that “severe flooding and landslides” could be expected in the northern areas of the main island Luzon.
The threat of flooding from Ragasa comes just a day after thousands of Filipinos took to the streets to protest a growing corruption scandal involving flood control projects that were shabbily constructed or never completed.
A day of largely peaceful demonstrations turned violent in the afternoon and early evening as rock-throwing protesters clashed with police, leading to more than 70 arrests.
The Philippines is the first major landmass facing the Pacific cyclone belt, and the archipelago is hit by an average of 20 storms and typhoons each year, putting millions of people in disaster-prone areas in a state of constant poverty.
Scientists warn that storms are becoming more powerful as the world warms due to the effects of human-driven climate change.