Crisis talks in Brazil as protests escalate

Brazil awoke to city centres still smouldering after a night that shocked the nation: One million anti- government protesters took to the streets in scores of cities, with clusters battling police and destroying swaths of storefronts and buildings.

President Dilma Rousseff called an emergency meeting about the demonstration with top Cabinet members, after a largely silent and much criticised response to some of the biggest protests seen in this 192m-person country in decades.

There were also growing calls on social media and in mass emails for a general strike next week.

If it materialises, the action could bring in unions and other organised groups to what has so far been an amorphous explosion of discontent over everything from high crime to poor education.

Brazilian media have mercilessly called out Rousseff and other leaders for their confused response to the protests.

“Dilma Rousseff and [Brasilia governor] Agnelo Queiroz are the epitome of Brazilian rulers,” political commentator Fernando Rodrigues wrote in the country’s biggest newspaper, Folha de S. Paulo.

“They embody the perplexity and the lack of leadership capabilities of several parties’ politicians vis-a-vis the new phenomena of protests without leaders or defined proposals... It seems they are just waiting and hoping the tsunami will end.”

To be sure, the lack of any organisation or concrete demands behind the protests has made a unified government response nearly impossible. Several cities have cancelled the transit fare hikes that had originally sparked the protests a week ago, but the outrage has only grown more intense.

Gilberto Carvalho, the secretary general of the presidency, provided little direction after a meeting to discuss Pope Francis’s planned July visit to Rio de Janeiro for World Youth Day. “We can’t anticipate the future,” Carvalho said.

“We don’t know what it’s going to be like. Perhaps things will not be so intense [as the recent protests] but we have to be prepared for anything.”

Foreign minister Antonio Patriota, for one, hit back at protesters the morning after his modernist ministry building was attacked.

Standing before the battered ministry, he told reporters he “was very angry” that protesters attacked a structure “that represents the search for understanding through dialogue.” He called for protesters “to convey their demands peacefully”.

“I believe that the great majority of the protesters are not taking part in this violence and are instead looking to improve Brazil’s democracy via legitimate forms of protest,” he said.

The majority of protesters have been peaceful, and crowds have taken to chanting “No violence! No violence!” when small groups have prepared to burn and smash. The more violent demonstrators have taken over once night has fallen.

Protesters and police clashed in several cities into the early hours. At least one protester was killed in Sao Paulo state when a driver apparently became enraged about being unable to travel along a street and rammed his car into a group of demonstrators.

In Rio de Janeiro, running clashes played out between riot police and clusters of mostly young men with T-shirts wrapped around their faces. But peaceful protesters were also caught up in the fray, too, as police fired tear gas canisters into their midst and at times indiscriminately used pepper spray. Rubber bullets and gas were also fired at fleeing crowds.

The unrest is hitting the nation as it hosts the Confederations Cup soccer tournament, with tens of thousands of foreign visitors in attendance. It also comes one month before the papal visit, and ahead of the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics, raising concerns about how Brazilian officials will provide security.