BRASILIA (Reuters) – Brazilian tribal leaders and advocates on Thursday criticized the granting of an indigenous rights award to President Jair Bolsonaro, calling it an “atrocity” that ignores his document on dismantling protections for native folks and the surroundings.
Justice Minister Anderson Torres on Wednesday gave the Medal of Indigenous Merit to his boss, Bolsonaro, in “recognition for related companies” within the protection of indigenous communities.
But indigenous Brazilians and environmental activists mentioned it was inappropriate to present such an award to the previous military captain, who has questioned the veracity of world warming, has erased environmental protections, and has pushed to permit mining and oil exploration on indigenous reservations.
“It is an atrocity to honor a president who has shamelessly opposed indigenous folks,” mentioned Congresswoman Joenia Wapichana, the second indigenous consultant ever to take a seat within the Brazilian legislature. She has launched a invoice to annul the decree giving Bolsonaro the medal.
One former recipient of the prize mentioned he could be handing it again in protest.
Ethnographer Sydney Possuelo, a number one authority on remoted Amazon tribes who earned the identical ornament 35 years in the past for his work creating the Yanomami reservation, mentioned he not wished the medal. In a press release, he mentioned it had “misplaced all that means.”
Leaders of Brazil’s 900,000 indigenous folks say Bolsonaro has been probably the most detrimental president in 4 many years of democracy for his or her rights and claims to ancestral lands.
Backed by Brazil’s highly effective farm foyer, Bolsonaro has lengthy advocated for larger improvement of the Amazon, the biggest tropical rainforest on the planet.
In workplace, he has defunded the federal government’s indigenous affairs company Funai and mentioned his authorities wouldn’t acknowledge one other inch of land claimed by tribes.
In 2020, he sparked outrage when he mentioned: “The Indian has developed and turn out to be an increasing number of a human being like us,” including that he wished them to combine extra into Brazilian society.
(Reporting by Anthony Boadle, Editing by Rosalba O’Brien)
