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Tens of thousands of Brazilians joined an independence day rally called by members of the rightwing opposition in protest against a supreme court judge who banned Elon Musk’s social media platform X in the country. 

Dressed in the national colours of yellow and green, attendees at Saturday’s demonstration in São Paulo held posters demanding the removal of justice Alexandre de Moraes, who has attracted controversy for a wide-ranging crackdown on digital disinformation. 

“I came here today in favour of freedom of expression. The constitution is being violated,” said 25 year-old radiologist Mayara Ribeira, wearing the shirt of the Brazilian football team. “The judge should be impeached”. 

X went offline in Latin America’s most populous nation just over a week ago after it ignored court orders to block certain accounts suspected of spreading falsehoods, many belonging to supporters of former hard-right president Jair Bolsonaro. 

It affected some 20mn users and marked an escalation of a months-long row over takedown decrees between Musk and Moraes, whom the tech entrepreneur has accused of censorship. 

“I don’t want anybody to be silenced, if they are leftwing or rightwing,” said retiree Elayne Nunes, 58, who travelled from the neighbouring state of Minas Gerais. “I’m happy that Elon Musk has brought to international attention what is happening in Brazil”.

The case has turned into a cause célèbre in the global debate about online free speech and energised Brazil’s populist conservative movement, which claims to be unfairly targeted by the judge. 

Allies of Moraes frame his actions as necessary to safeguard democracy against fake news, but opponents accuse him of eroding liberties. 

The blackout of X has divided opinion in Brazil. A survey by AtlasIntel found nearly 51 per cent of respondents disagreed with the ban, versus just over 48 per cent in favour.

Speakers at the event on Avenida Paulista urged senators to launch an impeachment of the judge, who has also become a target for wider criticisms that Brazil’s supreme court is overreaching its legal limits. 

They also appealed for an amnesty for people arrested in connection with the storming of government buildings in Brasília on January 8, 2023 by radical Bolsonaro supporters. 

Many of the rioters called for a military coup against leftwing president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who defeated Bolsonaro in the previous year’s election. 

“I hope that the federal senate puts a stop to this dictator Alexandre de Moraes, who does more harm to Brazil than Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva himself,” Bolsonaro said on stage. 

The ex-president faces a number of supreme court investigations from his time in office, including over an alleged coup plot — that was never implemented — to stay in power.

Researchers at the University of São Paulo estimated there were 45,400 people at Saturday’s event in Brazil’s largest city.

The trigger for X’s suspension was its failure to meet a deadline set by Moraes to appoint a new legal representative in the country, as required by domestic law. Musk had closed the company’s local office last month in protest at the judge’s orders. 

In his decision to block access to the platform, Moraes said X was seeking to create an environment of “total impunity” and a “lawless land” on Brazilian social media ahead of municipal elections next month.

Creomar de Souza at consultancy Dharma Political Risk said impeachment of the justice was unlikely for now: “It looks like we’re in for a long battle between Moraes and political forces in Brazil and abroad”.

That coincided with more trade between the two countries as Russia was largely shut out of Western markets as well as the global financial system.

By June, the yuan accounted for 99.6% of the Russian foreign exchange market, according to Bloomberg, which cited data from Russia’s central bank. And Russian commercial banks ramped up corporate loans denominated in yuan.

But this dependence on the yuan is now backfiring as top Russian banks are running out of the Chinese currency, Reuters reported on Thursday.

“We cannot lend in yuan because we have nothing to cover our foreign currency positions with,” German Gref, CEO of top Russian lender Sberbank, said at an economic forum.

That’s because the U.S. expanded its definition of Russia’s military industry earlier this year, thereby widening the potential scope of Chinese firms that could get hit with secondary sanctions for doing business with Moscow.

As a result, Chinese banks have been reluctant to transfer yuan to Russian counterparts while servicing foreign trade payments, leaving transactions in limbo for months. With yuan liquidity drying up from China, Russian companies have tapped the central bank for yuan via currency swaps.

At the start of this month, banks raised a record 35 billion yuan from Russian’s central bank through these swaps, according to Reuters. And banks were expecting more help.

“I think the central bank can do something,” Andrei Kostin, CEO of second-largest bank VTB, said Thursday. “They hopefully understand the need to increase the liquidity offer through swaps.”

But on Friday, Russia’s central bank dashed those hopes, calling on banks to curb corporate loans denominated in yuan.

The Bank of Russia also said in a report that swaps are only meant for short-term stabilization of the domestic currency market and are not a long-term source of funding, according to Bloomberg. But rather than simply filling the roles that dollars and euros did, yuan loans have expanded.

“The increase in yuan lending was partly caused by the replacement of loans in ‘toxic’ currencies, but 41% of the increase was down to new currency loans,” the bank said.

The central bank also released a survey that showed a quarter of Russian exporters had trouble with foreign counterparts, including blocked or returned payments even when dealing in supposedly friendly countries. And about half of exporters said the problems got worse in the second quarter from the prior quarter.

The overall Russian economy has been propped up by the government’s wartime spending as well as oil exports to China and India. But the combination of busy factories and labor shortages due to military mobilizations have stoked more inflation.

Researchers led by Yale’s Jeffrey Sonnenfeld warned the seemingly robust GDP data mask deeper problems in the economy.

“Simply put, Putin’s administration has prioritized military production over all else in the economy, at substantial cost,” they wrote. “While the defense industry expands, Russian consumers are increasingly burdened with debt, potentially setting the stage for a looming crisis. The excessive focus on military spending is crowding out productive investments in other sectors of the economy, stifling long-term growth prospects and innovation.”