Hundreds of thousands of Brazilians filled streets across the country Sunday to protest corruption and call for the impeachment of deeply unpopular President Dilma Rousseff and the jailing of her predecessor, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Protests were reported in every state in Brazil.
Wearing yellow and green Brazil national soccer team shirts and singing the national anthem, protesters denounced a multibillion-dollar corruption scandal involving bribes and kickbacks on fat contracts at the state-run oil company, Petrobras. That scandal has led to the jailing of politicians from Rousseff’s Workers’ Party and its coalition allies.
It was the fifth time in a year that protesters filled city streets across Brazil, and indications were that the number of protesters was higher than before. At least 450,000 people filled Sao Paulo’s central Paulista Avenue — more than in a 1984 human rights march that helped bring about the fall of Brazil’s dictatorship, the Datafolha polling institute reported.
