The former president is likely to seek asylum at the embassy of a country like A or A if he is faced with an arrest warrant before January 20. After that date, the USA, under the mandate of , becomes a likely destination as well.
This probability derives from two factors. First, this Thursday (28) to UOL: “Embassy, from what I see in the history of the world, right, anyone who finds themselves persecuted can go there.”
Secondly, because he rehearsed accessing this resource in February, when he spent two days inside the Hungarian Embassy in Brasília, shortly after his passport was seized. These two elements demonstrate that the former president is advised on this issue and has been considering this possibility since leaving power.
Asylum is an instrument of international law created to protect politically persecuted people. It cannot be confused, however, with a type of last resort through which a person convicted of a common crime escapes the country to avoid serving the sentence. The point is that the differentiation between one thing and another is the prerogative of whoever grants asylum and, in this sense, the government that receives the request has enormous discretionary power to do so.
If a leader such as Viktor Orbán or Donald Trump considers that Bolsonaro is the victim of persecution orchestrated by the minister, then asylum will be granted, even if the Brazilian Federal Supreme Court disagrees with the decision.
In practice, it is enough for Bolsonaro to enter a vehicle with a diplomatic license plate or a consular facility to be considered a diplomatic asylum seeker. The protection of these vehicles and installations is ensured by the 1961 Vienna Convention, which Brazil is obliged to comply with.
To seek asylum, the former president’s argument must be based on article 14 of the 1948 law, according to which “every person subject to persecution has the right to seek and benefit from asylum in other countries” or on article 1 of the 1954 Caracas Convention, according to which “every State has the right to grant asylum”.
The Supreme Court’s reply to this argument must be based, in turn, on the excerpt that follows immediately after, in the same Universal Declaration: “This right cannot, however, be invoked in the case of actually existing proceedings for a crime under common law or for activities contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.”
In practice, it is enough to know whether leaders like Orban, Milei or Trump consider that Bolsonaro was committing a common crime or was legitimately fighting to save Brazilian democracy from a coup plotted by the left in collusion with a Supreme Court judge, through widespread fraud in the electronic voting machines.
If they grant asylum, the Supreme Court will do nothing but protest. Julian Assange, who spent seven years living at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, shows how impossible it is to make predictions about the outcome of such cases.
