March 25, 2022

20:03

Yusseff Abrahim – Cenarium Magazine

BRASILIA – This week, another international denunciation fell upon Jair Bolsonaro’s government. This time, six Brazilian civil society organizations denounced, at the 49th meeting of the UN Human Rights Council (HRC 49), the Bill 191/2020, authored by the Executive Branch, which relaxes mining rules on Indigenous Lands.

The denunciation of the organizations Conectas Human Rights, Instituto Socioambiental (ISA), Associação dos Povos Indígenas do Brasil (Apib), Instituto Maíra, Kowit and Observatório do Clima was transmitted to Geneva, by videoconference, last Tuesday, 22.

In the message, read by Gustavo Huppes, Conectas’ International Advocacy advisor, the denunciation describes the PL as “a direct attack on indigenous peoples and a clear violation of the constitutional right to their territories and of the international obligations assumed by Brazil.

At the international level, the denunciation is yet another one that reaches the UN HRC regarding violations of indigenous rights. In March 2020, the spokesperson for the Ianomami, Davi Kopenawa, criticized government actions that would seriously increase the risk of genocide and ethnocide to the isolated peoples. In March 2020, the topic was the government’s neglect of the Covid-19 pandemic.

In another instance, that of the Criminal Court of The Hague, Bolsonaro has already accumulated six charges of crime against humanity.

Read also: Accusation of Bolsonaro for crime against humanity is received in The Hague Court

The coordinator of Conectas’ Program for the Defense of Socio-Environmental Rights, Julia Neiva, spoke exclusively to CENARIUM MAGAZINE on Thursday, 24, about the seriousness of Bill 191/2020 and the perspectives of the civil society’s dispute, inside and outside the country, for the respect of indigenous peoples’ rights.

“Certainly the denunciation can generate an embarrassment to the Brazilian government at the United Nations, which will be asked to respond on the danger that the PL 191/2020 can mean for the indigenous peoples”, he analyzes.

Neiva pointed out that the profusion of denunciations, even if in different instances, can serve as a parameter to the world of the level of the government’s measures on its people.

“It is evident that the more denunciations are made in international bodies such as the United Nations, the OAS, or even the OECD, this ends up corroborating so that the denunciations made about Jair Bolsonaro in the Criminal Court in The Hague have more basis, contributing to the understanding of the context of the government’s actions.

Internal perspectives

Despite the approval of PL 191/2020 in the urgency regime by the House of Representatives, on the 9th, with 279 votes in favor and 180 against, Neiva pointed out some aspects behind the result.

“There is a considerable number of parliamentarians who normally would have voted in favor of the proposal, but who were reticent about the PL. There is no longer that much certainty that this bill has broad support in Congress. This is already a very important fact for us,” he says.

Hoping that the congressmen are more aware of the impacts that the Bill 191/2020 will bring to the native peoples, the coordinator criticized the level of permissiveness that the proposal grants to mining.

“The bill ignores the mining model we have in Brazil, which is predatory and absolutely unsustainable, including mining in Indigenous Lands, power generation, exploration and production of oil, natural gas and other hydrocarbons,” she said.

Neiva informs that the organizations continue following the process in the House of Representatives, in vigilance over all possible attacks on the rights of indigenous peoples.

“Finally, we must remember that indigenous peoples have the right to express their opinion and decide what will happen in their territories,” he concludes.

Isolated interest

A fact that draws attention in the repercussion of PL 191/2020 is its public rejection. On the last 15th, the Brazilian Mining Institute (Ibram) abandoned the support it had maintained since the proposal’s launch. The institution, which represents giants such as Samarco, Vale, Anglo American, Rio Tinto and Vallourec, considered in a statement that the bill “would not be appropriate for its intended purposes and that it should be widely debated by Brazilian society and especially by indigenous peoples”.

Even before the vote on the urgency regime, the Federal Public Ministry already warned that the bill contains an “irreparable defect”, in a note released on the 8th, qualifying it as “unconstitutional and unconventional”.

Not even in public spaces the proposal seems to please. In the Olhos d’Água Park, in Brasília, created in 1994 for the conservation of an area rich in springs, ciliary forests and native cerrado vegetation, an ad signed by the “Rural Producers of the Amazon” that prematurely thanks the “approval of PL 191/2022” – which has not yet occurred – was the target of protest with red ink.

Incoherence and word games

The partner-founder of the Socio-environmental Institute (ISA), Marcos Santilli, highlighted the controversy contained in PL 191/2020 and recalled that the proposal is just one, among several government initiatives, that invests against original populations and the environment.

“PL 191 wants to establish an incoherent mineral policy, which on one hand maintains the set of rules and conditions for formal mining and at the same time facilitates the legalization of predatory corporate mining with a much lower degree of environmental, health and labor requirements. It comes in the same route as the recent presidential decree (Decree 10,966/2022) that intends to institute “artisanal mining”, which is a play on words to cover up large-scale mining invasions.”

The performance of civil society brings to mind how Bolsonaro always spoke about NGOs, perhaps already imagining the difficulties that these organizations would offer for the implementation of his vision of the country.

Read also: Learn who were the Amazon lawmakers that voted for the Bill of Mining on Indigenous Lands