Brazil needs to stop Bolsonaro from repeating Capitol Hill

Brazilian institutions, such as the judiciary and Congress, need to be careful to prevent the president from doing this Jair Bolsonaro (PL) Obvious attacks on democracy similar to the invasion of the Capitol, the seat of the US Congress, after the defeat of Donald TrumpThe director of the NGO said Human Rights Watch (human rights He watchesNo Brazil, Maria Laura Canineu, in an interview with UOL.

In its global report released today, The entity dedicates a great deal of space to the deterioration of democratic institutions and human rights violations in Brazil. “Brazilian civil society, the international community, and institutions need to be vigilant so that what happened in the United States with the Capitol invasion does not happen here,” she warns.

In the United States, extremist Trump supporters stormed Congress, attacked police and defaced the Capitol as a way to try to prevent the Democrat’s victory from being ratified. Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.

The attack caused an unprecedented crisis in American democracy, and authorities have arrested or convicted more than 700 people since then.

The day after the attack on the Capitol, Bolsonaro told his supporters that something worse could happen in Brazil – making it contingent on the maintenance of electronic voting machines. “If we don’t have a printed vote in 2022, which is a way to review the vote, we’ll have a worse problem than in the United States,” he threatened.

Throughout 2021, Bolsonaro systematically attacked STF (Supremo Tribunal Federal), TSE (Supreme Court Eleitoral) and spreading conspiracy theories and fake news about electronic voting machines – although he promised to provide evidence of electoral fraud, Bolsonaro never did.

On several occasions, the president said he would not accept defeat in this year’s elections and threatened not to allow the elections to take place.

Maria Laura cites Bolsonaro’s popularity drop, the economic crisis taking shape and predictions of a possible defeat in the elections – the president loses to the ex-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (PT) according to major research institutes – as factors that can lead you to extremism and attempt to break with democracy.

The Human Rights Watch director says, however, that she believes Brazilian institutions have already shown they can contain Bolsonaro’s attacks.

Brazilian institutions have shown that they are robust and capable of containing the most powerful and relevant threats. What we should expect is that they will continue to do so. Even more important this year, given the approaching election date
Maria Laura canino, Director Human Rights Watch no brazil

Fears of deforestation in the Amazon

Maria Laura still remembers that deforestation in the Amazon is increasing uncontrollably.

According to data from Prodes (Amazon Deforestation Account Program), which makes annual assessments of the devastated area in the biome, deforestation in the forest reached the worst level in the last 15 years between August 2020 and July 2021.

The report containing the data was ready on October 27, but was only released on November 18, after the end of COP 26 (the 26th United Nations Conference on Climate Change), in Glasgow, Scotland. According to Folha de S.Paulo, the delay was aimed at avoiding criticism of Bolsonaro’s government at the international event.

Since the resignations of Ricardo Salles of the Ministry of Environment and Ernesto Araujo of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Brazilian government has been trying to adopt a less aggressive rhetoric regarding the environmental issue.

However, the Human Rights Watch director believes that this has not led to effective changes in the region.

“The federal government has tried to change the rhetoric due to international pressure and interest in making the Mercosur agreement with the European Union viable and joining the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. [Organização para a Cooperação e Desenvolvimento Econômico]But the results are not there. The dismantling of environmental inspections is still a reality, and the number of fines has been significantly reduced,” she says.

Maria Laura also mentions the constant attacks on employees of inspection bodies, such as Ibama (Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources) and ICMBio (Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation)Environmental advocates working in the area. “The climate of fear and intimidation is real,” he adds.