"The tendency is for tempers to flare," says Minister Marco Aurélio.
“I worry when street antagonism arises, like what we saw in São Paulo and Rio. The tendency is for tempers to flare. People are showing themselves to be very passionate. It's a serious matter,” said the minister.
247 - Supreme Court Justice Marco Aurélio Mello believes that the demonstrations in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, both in support of and against Jair Bolsonaro, are likely to escalate tensions.
“I worry when street antagonism arises, like what we saw in São Paulo and Rio. The tendency is for tempers to flare. People show themselves to be very passionate. It's a serious matter,” the minister said in an interview with Metrópoles.
The minister also defended the actions of the police in the respective states, saying they acted correctly in separating the protests against the President of the Republic from those that support him.
“What they [police officers] can’t do is equivocate. They have to go in with an iron fist and kid gloves. But they have to separate them. Sometimes, the use of force is necessary,” he argued. “It’s difficult to criticize the police. We don’t have what we had in the United States, which was very ugly,” Marco Aurélio compared, referring to the death of George Floyd, a black man who, without offering resistance, was immobilized by a white police officer and later found dead. “We don’t have violence in that sense,” he said.