Bolsonaro confirms genocidal tendencies by dismantling the Covid-19 response project aimed at indigenous communities.

There is a feeling of perplexity and outrage among those who defend the rights of indigenous peoples regarding President Jair Bolsonaro's vetoes of Bill 1142, authored by federal deputy Professora Rosa Neide (PT-MT), which creates the Emergency Plan to Combat Covid-19 in indigenous territories. It is unacceptable that, in the face of the so-called "War Budget" approved by the National Congress, which guarantees funding for various sectors affected by the pandemic, the government claims a lack of resources to justify such barbarity.

With his 17 vetoes, Bolsonaro has sanctioned a project that becomes a "dead letter," so thoroughly dismantling the text approved in the Chamber and the Senate that almost no guarantees remain for indigenous peoples. Bolsonaro's inhumanity is shocking; he was able to veto the guarantee of access to potable water, the free distribution of hygiene and cleaning materials for disinfecting villages and communities, and the guarantee of medium and high complexity care for indigenous people, prohibiting the emergency provision of hospital beds and ICUs.

The criminal vetoes don't stop there: Indigenous people will not be entitled to the distribution of basic food baskets, seeds, and agricultural tools, nor will they be entitled to be included in municipal emergency plans for the care of seriously ill patients. The SUS (Brazilian Public Health System) will no longer need to register care provided to Indigenous people. The greatest cruelty was reserved for Quilombola communities and other traditional peoples: they were summarily excluded from the Emergency Plan and will not have access to any of the rights that the law seeks to guarantee.

In the face of this tragedy, Bolsonaro affronts the Chamber and the Senate by modifying a project that was the result of much negotiation, coordinated by congresswoman Joênia Wapichana, and which united almost all parties, including those in the government's allied base, and reaffirms his contempt for the indigenous peoples of our country. I take the liberty of reproducing an excerpt from the statement of the Agrarian Nucleus of the PT caucus in the Chamber of Deputies, of which I am a member and with whom I join in the indignation: “Behind the vetoes lies an even more nefarious intention: to weaken the defense of the territories, first so that death can enter, then to make them vulnerable to the economic interests of mining, agribusiness, land expropriation, environmental devastation and all sorts of capital enclosures around these places of life, history, culture and future.”

Bolsonaro confirms his genocidal tendencies and wants to destroy indigenous peoples, quilombola communities, and other traditional communities through hunger, lack of water, and Covid-19.

The decision by Supreme Court Justice Luís Roberto Barroso, which mandates that the government adopt measures to prevent the deaths of indigenous people from the coronavirus, such as preventing the invasion of indigenous lands and adopting an emergency plan to combat Covid-19—precisely the objective of the bill that Bolsonaro had cut to pieces—is encouraging. But it is still not a guarantee that anything will be done.

As we have learned from the struggle of indigenous peoples, living in these times is an act of resistance. Therefore, let us begin today the work of mobilization, dialogue, and parliamentary and civil society coordination to overturn Bolsonaro's vetoes of Bill 1142, reinstating quilombola and traditional peoples in the Emergency Plan and ensuring the right to life for all.

Overturn the vetoes on Bill 1142 now!