Chapter 1407: Chapter 676: Empathy Cri?
Global Tis headquarters.
Editor Juan held the anonymous letter in his hand. The letter was slipped through the mailbox at the back door of the newspaper office in the early morning, with no signature, just a few lines typed out: “The President has ordered that if the command point is not controlled, the Army will launch a strong attack on Rosinha, regardless of the hostages’ lives!”
Juan didn’t dare waste ti and directly sent the letter to the chief editor’s office.
The next day, when the first newspaper with the bold headline was sent to the street kiosks, the people of Brazil, who didn’t know the reason, were sowhat in an uproar.
In front of the kiosk next to the Bahia coast beach, the salty sea breeze wrapped in the beach’s heat hit head-on.
“My God! Look at this headline! The President actually doesn’t care about the hostages’ lives? Those are living people!”
The old man selling coconuts nearby was slowly peeling a coconut with a curved knife, but he suddenly looked up when he heard the noise, his wrinkles instantly filled with astonishnt.
He hurriedly pushed his reading glasses up his nose, trembling as he leaned closer to the newspaper, his cloudy eyes repeatedly scanning the bold headline, and burst out Portuguese curses with a thick Bahia accent, “These bastards! Have their consciences been eaten by alligators? There are children in Rosinha! There are elderly! A strong attack? This is murder! Only executioners would do such things!”
His cursing beca more agitated, and with a “clang,” the curved knife banged on the coconut!
“Son of a bitch!”
Not far away, several tourists who had just co from the beach were wiping the water droplets off their faces. Upon hearing the commotion, they also gathered around. A woman in a floral dress leaned over to read the headline, gasped in shock, suddenly covered her mouth with her hands, and exclaid through her fingers, “Oh my God! I’ve bought handmade accessories at the Rosinha market before. The people there are very kind! How can they disregard their lives like this?”
“Kind?”
A friend next to her sneered, “Brazil is just like xico, full of mongrels. They’re into drug trafficking and smuggling, oh, but they play football very well.”
The woman gave him a discontented look, “You’re being racist, John.”
The other person curled his lips.
God is also racist; otherwise, why create so many races?
In less than an hour, this newspaper sold out.
Soon after, another opposition-leaning newspaper, Brazil Daily, jumped in. They sohow dug up more “explosive” material, exaggeratingly writing about the President’s words last night in the conference room “if necessary, co on strong” into “the President threatened to sacrifice a few hostages to save the face of the nation,” along with a blurred photo of a corpse beneath the Copacabana Palace Hotel, and beneath it wrote, “The next one could be your family.”
In the 90s, Brazil had no internet, and news was spread through newspapers, radio stations, and street leaflets.
In Sao Paulo Radio Station’s “Morning Livelihood” program, the host Luis’s voice carried a deliberately emotional tremor: “Dear listeners, we’ve just received reliable information. The Presidential Palace has rejected the Red Command’s request for negotiations but instead has the Army set up mortars. Think of those children still in the hotel, think of the elderly in the hospital; should they pay for the President’s intransigence?”
At noon, at the breakwater beside Copacabana Beach, over two hundred people had gathered, led by a college student in a plaid shirt nad Ricardo, holding a piece of cardboard with the words “No Blood, Want Negotiation!” written crookedly in red paint.
The people behind him followed his shout, and the voice grew from scattered to orderly, gradually overpowering the sound of the waves.
So held photos of hostages cut from the newspaper, with a French tourist’s eyes wide open, tears streaking down his face; others held a banner saying, “Why not peace!”
The crowd grew increasingly large, moving from the breakwater to Atlantic Avenue, then toward the Presidential Palace. As they passed by the Copacabana Palace Hotel, soone picked up stones from the roadside and threw them at the hotel’s main door. Although the door was welded shut, the stones hit the glass with a “clang,” which aroused more intense responses. A few drug traffickers holding AK-47s peeked out from the hotel’s second-floor terrace, unbelievably waving at the protest crowd, with soone even tossing a few bottles of mineral water down, causing a chaotic cheer below.
“Look! They’re not demons!” soone seized the opportunity to shout, “They’re willing to give us water, but the President wants to blow this place up!”
“They are kind!”
At one in the afternoon, the center of Sao Paulo was also in chaos.
Thousands of workers, holding tools, blocked the entrance to the state governnt building, shouting slogans to “stop the strong attack.” Soone lit newspapers, and the flas, carried by the wind, drifted onto the cars beside the road, and with a “boom”, the car windows shattered all over the ground.
When the police arrived, they only had high-pressure water guns and tear gas—90s Brazilian police equipnt was far from sophisticated, and facing the out-of-control crowd, they had to charge in forcefully.
In the tear gas smoke, so people were knocked down by water guns, others threw bricks at the police, and a teacher with glasses coughed while covering his nose but was still shouting, “Violence can’t solve problems! Negotiate with the drug traffickers!”
The crystal chandelier in the Oval Office of the Presidential Palace shimred with gloom.
The shadow of the Brazilian President stretched long, his fingers clutching a cigar burned to the end, his eyebrows furrowed tightly, and his hands still trembling slightly.
“It’s not a loss of control; it’s a conspiracy.”
He forcefully stubbed out the cigar in the crystal ashtray, his voice carrying suppressed fury, his gaze sweeping over the National Security Advisor, Fernando, standing before the desk. “Look at these slogans—negotiate, not blood, exactly the sa as the morning’s Brazil Daily’s rhetoric! And those throwing stones at the hotel, who gave them the guts?”
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