Singer Bebel Gilberto took to social media to apologize this Saturday (23) after a video of her dancing samba on top of a Brazilian flag went viral.
During a show in the United States, João Gilberto and Miúcha’s daughter receives a flag with a pole from a fan in the audience.
She walks holding the flag hoisted and says: “I don’t like doing this because I’m not Bolsonaro.” So, the singer makes her protest by sambando on top of the national symbol.
“Sorry, I shouldn’t have done that. But am I proud to be Brazilian or not?”, added Bebel before starting to sing the song “Bananeira”.
The episode took place last Tuesday (19), in a performance at “The Guild Theatre”, an amphitheater for about 500 people in the city of Menlo Parks, in the US state of California.
However, the repercussion only grew this weekend, after politicians and other personalities of the Brazilian right began to share the video with criticism.
On Saturday night (23), Bebel Gilberto spoke about the act.
“It was a thoughtless act of mine, because if I had had time to reason, it would have occurred to me that I was giving the far right an image with which they could distill their repugnant hatred and false patriotism,” wrote the statement. singer on Instagram.
She accused critics of editing the part of the video in which, while still on stage, she apologized for the protest.
“Immediately afterwards, however, I realized that the flag also belongs to all Brazilians and I apologized to the public,” Bebel said on Instagram.
“I love Brazil and I am sure that soon the hateful radicals will be swept into the dustbin of history. To the good Brazilians who, like me, are intransigent defenders of democracy but were offended by my thoughtless act, my sincere apologies. Brazil is bigger than any government or politician”, concluded the singer.
Is Bebel Gilberto’s protest considered a crime?
Despite all the repercussion, the singer’s action does not constitute a crime .
Even though Bebel is in the United States, there would even be legal instruments to apply the Penal Code of Brazil outside Brazilian territory, but there is no crime in the protest carried out.
In an interview with CNN, lawyer, master in criminal law and doctor in constitutional law Acacio Miranda da Silva Filho explained that “today there is no longer a crime when the Brazilian flag is outraged in some way”.
In situations of protests involving the Brazilian flag, it is common to be remembered by critics Article 44 of Decree-Law No. 898which was signed in 1969 by the Admiral Augusto Rademakera member of the Military Junta that governed Brazil during the removal of Costa e Silva.
In that article, it was defined that “destroying or violating the flag” could lead to a prison sentence of 2 to 4 years.
However, the decree was revoked and the penalty for the crime against the flag was mitigated by the Geisel’s National Security Act, 1978.
When the last president of the military dictatorship, João Figueiredo, updates Geisel’s law, in 1983the crime against the flag was no longer included in the text.
In turn, the last remnants of Figueiredo’s National Security Law were revoked in 2021, after sanction with vetoes by President Jair Bolsonaro (PL).
Then, when dealing with the case of Bebel Gilberto, the jurist Acacio Miranda stated: “As much as she [a bandeira] is a symbol of Brazil, a national symbol, the law that provided for these circumstances no longer applies. So there is no more incidence of this crime.”
“There is no longer any reason for us to discuss the circumstance [de se aplicar a lei fora do Brasil] because crime ceased to exist”, he concluded.
Source: CNN Brasil
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