SAO PAULO – Protesters against Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro defied police in the capital Friday, a day after the latest round of arrests of the leader's critics under a dictatorship-era national security law.
Four demonstrators were detained Thursday after calling Bolsonaro “genocidal” for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic and displaying a cartoon depicting the president as a Nazi.
But on Friday, police quietly watched an hour-long protest against Bolsonaro staged by about 40 people. The national security law, which dates from 1983, near the end of the country's military dictatorship, states it is a crime to harm the heads of the three branches of government or expose them to danger.