Bar Association Of India Condemns Brazil Riots, Wants G20 To Strengthen ‘Rule Of Law’

The Bar Association of India called for concerted action to prevent incidents similar to the riots that happened in Brazil's capital last Sunday, where rioters targeted the nation's top government establishments.

In a note condemning the attack, the bar's President Prashant Kumar, on behalf of BRICS Legal Forum India Chapter, urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to galvanise the G20 member countries "to take the strengthening of the rule of law in its true sense on the top of the G20 agenda".

On Sunday, thousands of supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro stormed Brazil's Congress, Presidential Palace and the Supreme Court to incite a military intervention. The insurrection comes just a week after Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva returned to power in the South American nation.

Lula, who was visiting cities destroyed by rains in Sao Paulo, returned late to Brasilia and decreed federal intervention in the city's security. The Congress is expected to confirm this in an extraordinary session on Monday.

"After the incidents in the U.S. Capitol on April 2, 2021, a repeat in Brazil yesterday not only deserves outright condemnation but requires a call for concerted action to prevent the spread of such tendencies as a contagion to wreck and negate the very notion and institutions of the Rule of Law and democracy," the bar's statement read.

It raised concerns over sustenance of rule of law, "especially in the background of the rise of phenomenon in the last decades where the outcomes of electoral democracy are aggressively pursued by political players".

On Jan. 6, 2021, supporters of former U.S. President Donald Trump, attacked the U.S. Capitol building in Washington D.C. to stop the counting of electoral college votes to officiate President Joe Biden's victory.