“I’m not sure what’s more depressing”, he wrote, “the fact this stuff is happening to foreigners so close to the Olympic Games or the fact that the Brazilians have to live in a society that enables this absolute bullshit on a daily basis”.
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While he was warned by one of the men not to report the incident, Lee went to the tourism police anyway, adding: “I was umming and ahhing about whether I should even make a complaint”.
These guys have pulled me over, they have weapons. “I’m not in any position to negotiate”, Lee said.
Lee, who was not carrying any money at the time, was forced to drive to a nearby police bunker underneath an overpass, where he was swapped into an unmarked private vehicle and taken to two ATMs to withdraw enough money to pay the officers.
A spokesman from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade said it did not have information on the incident but pointed to its advice section.
He was finally released after handing over the money the men demanded, and they told him to not “say anything to anyone about this, not a word”.
Lee is a national Jiu-Jitsu champion.
“Hearing that, that’s not good news at all”, she told 3AW.
Hearing something like that is very disturbing.
The Australian Olympic team have recently boycotted the athletes’ village after officials deemed their assigned apartment tower blocks uninhabitable.
Lee, a Brazilian jiu-jitsu fighter, now lives in Rio with his partner having relocated to the country a year or so ago to pursue his fighting career.
The Games start on August 5 and have already been beset with controversy, with a number of athletes pulling out through fear of the zika virus, while Russian Federation escaped a blanket ban from the Games following a state-sponsored doping programme.
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Per Peters, Australian Paralympic sailor Liesl Tesch and team official Sarah Ross were also robbed at gunpoint in June.
