PRESIDENT Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil is not only causing an environmental crisis by allowing illegal burning, mining and logging in the Amazon, and legalising 300 new pesticides which have killed more than 500 million bees, which play a vital role in pollinating crops. He’s also allowing and encouraging genocide of native Indians, both indirectly, by destroying the forests and wild animals they subsist from; and directly, as illegal ranchers, loggers and miners fight Indians and attack their villages.
In 2016 Bolsonaro filmed himself saying “In 2019 we’re going to rip up Raposa Serra do Sol [native Indian Territory in Roraima, northern Brazil]. We’re going to give all the ranchers guns.”
In 2015 he said " Indians don’t speak our language, they don’t have money, they don’t have culture..How did they manage to get 13 per cent of the national territory?” A week ago he repeated it.
He’s said it’s a shame Brazil’s cavalry didn’t exterminate Indians as efficiently as the US cavalry.
He said when he became President there would be “not one centimetre” of land for indigenous peoples, as they’re “a barrier” to mining and agri-business.
He sees native Indians as an inferior, alien race hampering economic development. He’ll allow them to be forced off their land, killed, or reduced to poverty, alcoholism or prostitution; erasing their culture, language and way of life.
That’s genocide, begun by his European ancestors who took 86 per cent of the native population’s land by force. Now he wants to take the other 14 per cent and leave them with nothing.
If you think it’s just rhetoric, Mr Bolsonaro was an army captain during Brazil’s last military dictatorship. He’s said their only mistake was not killing more of the people they tortured. As President he held a celebration of the 1964 military coup.
All governments, including the UK’s, should refuse trade deals with Brazil, or which include it; and place sanctions on Brazilian exports. The UN should consider whether UN sanctions and a UN force combining firefighters and soldiers are required to stop the genocide.
Duncan McFarlane, Carluke.
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