Brazil President Fails To Quell Mass Protests

By Jason Farrell, Sky Correspondent in Rio de Janeiro

Fresh protests have erupted in Brazil after President Dilma Rousseff addressed the nation and promised to improve public services and fight harder against corruption.

An estimated 250,000 people in more than 100 cities returned to the streets overnight, according to a police count published on the website of Brazil's Globo TV network.

In some areas, police and demonstrators clashed despite Ms Rousseff's plea for an end to the violence.

Across the nation, people gathered to denounce legislation, known as PEC 37, that would limit the power of federal prosecutors to investigate crimes - which many fear would hinder attempts to jail corrupt politicians.

In the southeastern city of Belo Horizonte, more than 70,000 people chanting "The Cup for whom?" rallied outside the Mineirao stadium while Mexico and Japan took part in a Confederations Cup game, a dress rehearsal for next year's World Cup.

Police fired tear gas when some of the demonstrators hurled stones and tried to break through the stadium's security barrier. Fifteen people were reported injured in the clashes.

Protesters tried to break through the security barrier at Mineirao stadium

During her pre-recorded TV address on Friday, Ms Rousseff promised she would always battle corruption and that she would meet with peaceful protesters, governors and the mayors of big cities to create a national plan to improve urban transportation and use oil royalties for investments in education.

Many Brazilians hoped that Ms Rousseff's words, after several days of silence from the leader, would soothe tensions and help avoid more violence, but not everyone is convinced by her promises of action.

Earlier, 500 footballs, each with a red cross painted on, have been planted into the sand of Rio's Copacabana beach to represent 500,000 murders in Brazil in the last decade.

It was a striking image used to portray a shocking statistic.

The use of footballs was another reference to the money that has been lavished on the World Cup - a growing theme of the mass protests that began over bus fares.

Protesters have planted 500 footballs in the sand at Copacabana beach

Mattheus Mendes Costa, a student who helped create the display, believes the spending on stadiums for the Cup is what awakened Brazilians to what the country could achieve elsewhere.

"It's frustrating that we have spent double what anyone else paid in preparing for the World Cup but our social projects don't get the same attention," he said.

"People want that to change now. We want hospitals, schools, and security all to Fifa standard."

The demonstration was set up by the non-governmental organisation Rio Paz (Rio Peace) which has been trying to deal with the homicide problem in the favelas, the precariously-built shanty towns that cling to the mountains around Rio.

The NGO's director, Antonio Costa, said: "We are the seventh biggest economy in the world but one of the most socially imbalanced.

"We have the fourth most crowded prisons, and just a few people have 60% of the country's wealth. They are the ones who influence all the political decisions."

This is another recurring theme from the demonstrators. They feel it's time a greater number enjoyed the wealth of the nation.

It's worth remembering that 40 million Brazilians have crossed the poverty line in the last decade.

The burial of the balls represents the murder of 500,000 Brazilians

And Ms Rousseff reminded her countrymen on Friday that she, as a Marxist revolutionary, had helped bring wealth and democracy to the people when she fought against Brazil's 1964-1985 military regime.

As the President tried to appease protesters with the offer of various social reform policies, she also told Brazilians that her struggle had given them the right to demonstrate.

"My generation fought a lot so that the voice of the streets could be heard," Ms Rousseff said. "Many were persecuted, tortured and many died for this."

The President's standing as a revolutionary is the thing that might just help her ride out this wave of protest, but there's a feeling on the streets that only now are the people taking political control.

"I think its going to be a time of big change in Brazil, because for the first time in 20 years we've frightened the political class," Antonio Costa said.

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