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发帖数: 26623 | 1 (Reuters) - As many as 200,000 demonstrators marched through the streets of
Brazil's biggest cities on Monday in a swelling wave of protest tapping into
widespread anger at poor public services, police violence and government
corruption.
The marches, organized mostly through snowballing social media campaigns,
blocked streets and halted traffic in more than a half-dozen cities,
including Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte and Brasilia, where
demonstrators climbed onto the roof of Brazil's Congress building and then
stormed it.
Monday's demonstrations were the latest in a flurry of protests in the past
two weeks that have added to growing unease over Brazil's sluggish economy,
high inflation and a spurt in violent crime.
While most of the protests unfolded as a festive display of dissent, some
demonstrators in Rio threw rocks at police, set fire to a parked car and
vandalized the state assembly building. Vandals also destroyed property in
the southern city of Porto Alegre.
Around the country, protesters waved Brazilian flags, dancing and chanting
slogans such as "The people have awakened" and "Pardon the inconvenience,
Brazil is changing."
The epicenter of Monday's march shifted from Sao Paulo, where some 65,000
people took to the streets late in the afternoon, to Rio. There, as
protesters gathered throughout the evening, crowds ballooned to 100,000
people, local police said. At least 20,000 more gathered in Belo Horizonte.
The demonstrations are the first time that Brazilians, since a recent decade
of steady economic growth, are collectively questioning the status quo.
BIG EVENTS LOOM
The protests have gathered pace as Brazil is hosting the Confederation's Cup
, a dry run for next year's World Cup soccer championship. The government
hopes these events, along with the 2016 Summer Olympics, will showcase
Brazil as an emerging power on the global stage.
Brazil also is gearing up to welcome more than 2 million visitors in July as
Pope Francis makes his first foreign trip for a gathering of Catholic youth
in Rio.
Contrasting the billions in taxpayer money spent on new stadiums with the
shoddy state of Brazil's public services, protesters are using the
Confederation's Cup as a counterpoint to amplify their concerns. The
tournament got off to shaky start this weekend when police clashed with
demonstrators outside stadiums at the opening matches in Brasilia and Rio.
"For many years the government has been feeding corruption. People are
demonstrating against the system," said Graciela Caçador, a 28-year-old
saleswoman protesting in Sao Paulo. "They spent billions of dollars
building stadiums and nothing on education and health."
More protests are being organized for the coming days. It is unclear what
specific response from authorities - such as a reduction in the hike of
transport fares - would lead the loose collection of organizers across
Brazil to consider stopping them.
For President Dilma Rousseff, the demonstrations come at a delicate time, as
price increases and lackluster growth begin to loom over an expected run
for re-election next year.
Polls show Rousseff still is widely popular, especially among poor and
working-class voters, but her approval ratings began to slip in recent weeks
for the first time since taking office in 2011. Rousseff was booed at
Saturday's Confederations Cup opener as protesters gathered outside.
Through a spokeswoman, Rousseff called the protests "legitimate" and said
peaceful demonstrations are "part of democracy." The president, a leftist
guerrilla as a young woman, also said that it was "befitting of youth to
protest."
WIDE ARRAY OF GRIEVANCES
Some were baffled by the protests in a country where unemployment remains
near record lows, even after more than two years of tepid economic growth.
"What are they going to do - march every day?" asked Cristina, a 43-year-old
cashier, who declined to give her surname, peeking out at the demonstration
from behind the curtain of a closed Sao Paulo butcher shop. She said
corruption and other age-old ills in Brazil are unlikely to change soon.
The marches began this month with an isolated protest in Sao Paulo against a
small increase in bus and subway fares. The demonstrations initially drew
the scorn of many middle-class Brazilians after protesters vandalized
storefronts, subway stations and buses on one of the city's main avenues.
The movement quickly gained support and spread to other cities as police
used heavy-handed tactics to quell the demonstrations. The biggest crackdown
happened on Thursday in Sao Paulo when police fired rubber bullets and tear
gas in clashes that injured more than 100 people, including 15 journalists,
some of whom said they were deliberately targeted.
Other common grievances at Monday's marches included corruption and the
inadequate and overcrowded public transportation networks that Brazilians
cope with daily.
POLICE SHOW RESTRAINT
The harsh police reaction to last week's protests touched a nerve in Brazil,
which endured two decades of political repression under a military
dictatorship that ended in 1985. It also added to doubts about whether
Brazil's police forces would be ready for next year's World Cup.
The uproar following last week's crackdown prompted Sao Paulo state Governor
Geraldo Alckmin, who first described the protesters as "troublemakers" and
"vandals," to order police to allow Monday's march to proceed and not to use
rubber bullets.
The protests are shaping up as a major political challenge for Alckmin, a
former presidential candidate, and Sao Paulo's new mayor, Fernando Haddad, a
rising star in the left-leaning Workers' Party that has governed Brazil for
the past decade. Haddad invited protest leaders to meet Tuesday morning,
but has so far balked at talk of a bus fare reduction.
The resonance of the demonstrations underscores what economists say will be
a challenge for Rousseff and other Brazilian leaders in the years ahead:
providing public services to meet the demands of the growing middle class.
"Voters are likely to be increasingly disgruntled on a range of public
services in a lower growth environment," Christopher Garman, a political
analyst at the Eurasia Group, wrote in a report.
(Additional reporting by Esteban Israel and Eduardo Simões; Editing by
Paulo Prada) | N*****m
发帖数: 42603 | 2 反个屁啊
下次选下去不就得了
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into
past
【在 g*q 的大作中提到】
: (Reuters) - As many as 200,000 demonstrators marched through the streets of
: Brazil's biggest cities on Monday in a swelling wave of protest tapping into
: widespread anger at poor public services, police violence and government
: corruption.
: The marches, organized mostly through snowballing social media campaigns,
: blocked streets and halted traffic in more than a half-dozen cities,
: including Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte and Brasilia, where
: demonstrators climbed onto the roof of Brazil's Congress building and then
: stormed it.
: Monday's demonstrations were the latest in a flurry of protests in the past
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