The International Committee of Solidarity in Defence of Lula and Democracy in Brazil ( Portugese: Comitê Internacional de Solidariedade a Lula e à Democracia no Brasil), also known as the Free Lula Movement (Portuguese: Movimento Lula Livre), is a political and social movement composed of several Brazilian entities that advocates the release of the ex- Brazilian President Lula from prison.
Lula has long proved a divisive figure , but the summary imprisonment has sounded the alarm for many people – even those who might not agree with his politics – about a danger to the fabric of Brazil’s democracy. How did a rising global power with a vibrant democracy plummet into a political abyss?
Luís Inácio Lula da Silva was the most influential trade union leader in Brazil in the 1970s, and the most important leader of the ‘new unions’ emerging under the military dictatorship. These combative unions were centred in the consumer goods industries, state-owned enterprises and the civil service.
Between the late 1970s and early 1980s, Lula led some of the largest and most influential workers’ strikes in Brazilian history. He was also the leading founder of the Brazilian Workers’ Party (PT) in the early 1980s, spending several years as party president. But, despite media hype at the time, Lula was never a ‘socialist’ of any description. He was always a social democrat, and a negotiator: he is impressively good at reaching agreement across economic and political divides, and this quality was essential in his political trajectory.
He built the largest party of the masses in the country, he ran and lost three presidential elections, and he challenged the discrimination, the powerful upper class and the media, to become, in October 2002, the first worker elected president of Brazil. In eight years in office, he proved it was possible to change the destiny of the country.
Lula was favourite to win Brazil's 2018 presidential election but was barred from running by the country’s top electoral court, due to a controversial corruption conviction, which people say was just a means of keeping him from returning to power.in a move condemned by the UN Human Rights Committee.
This was the outcome of an unprecedented judicial persecution already lasting four years: the most egregious case of lawfare in the world today. The affair is thought to have contributed to the sudden death of Lula’s wife Marisa. His bank accounts, savings and pensions have been blocked, rendering him destitute. Yet, no allegation has been proven, and this ruling comes courtesy of a judge overtly aligned with a right-wing party and with close contacts with the US Department of Justice, who also played the roles of prosecutor and jury
The result was the election of Jair Bolsonaro, an ultra-militaristic, right-wing, religious extremist who has pledged to continue imposing neoliberal economic policies that impact Brazil’s working class and poor while encouraging hatred and violence against LGBTQI people, Black people, poor, social movements and dissidents in general.Threatening civil liberties, the rights of minorities and Brazil’s fragile democracy. These dark forces are preventing Brazil from being a truly democratic country.
On January 24, 2018, an appeals court in Porto Alegre, Brazil confirmed a previous ruling against Lula of the Workers’ Party, sentencing him to over 12 years in jail.
On April 4, the Supreme Court rejected the habeas corpus presented by Lula’s defense. The habeas corpus would have permitted Lula to remain free while he appealed his criminal conviction. The following day, Sérgio Moro, the federal judge heading the Lava Jato investigation and the soon-to-be Minister of Justice in the Bolsonaro presidency, gave Lula until 5 p.m. of the next day to present himself to the Federal Police of Curitiba, a city in the south of Brazil, to begin his sentence. The declaration of the judge caused an uproar both within Brazil and internationally. Major international media organizations denounced the decision as a sign of the decay of Brazilian democracy.
For many he is considered to be a political prisoner whose continuing detention tarnishes Brazilian democracy. Persecuted and imprisoned by the Brazilian elite he remains a symbol for progressive forces in Brazil. He is backed by the Brazilian trade union movement he used to lead and the Workers’ Party he helped to found.His supporters also include numerous MPs, cultural figures, alongside foreign leftist leaders, such as Michelle Bachelet from Chile and François Hollande from France, as well as the Bolivian leader Evo Morales and U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders.
Please help this important campaign by adding your name here: https://brazilsolidarity.eaction.online/freeLula
