Justice presented the account to Jair Bolsonaro: 27 years and three months in prison for attacking democracy. The historic judgment of the Brazilian Supreme Court closes a dark chapter for the country, but leaves another, perhaps even more painful: that of environmental devastation and the rights denied to indigenous peoples, crimes for which the former president, for now, will not pay.
A verdict for history
The verdict arrived at the end of a Tesissimo process, which saw the “trump of the tropics” recognized guilty of a frontal attack on the institutions. The accusation is very heavy: attempted coup, criminal association, violent abolition of the rule of law. Four out of five judges agreed: Bolsonaro acted “with the aim of eroding democracy”. The international reaction was not long in coming, with the former ally Donald Trump who defined the verdict “terrible thing”. A sentence that also condemned seven of his collaborators, including five military officers, sending an unprecedented warning to the country’s armed forces.
Impunished ect
But while Brazilian democracy breathes a sigh of relief, the Amazon forest continues to burn. The sentence, in fact, does not touch the policies that have marked its presidency. The report of Greenpeace, “Dangerous Man, Dangerous Deals”, is a war bulletin: under Bolsonaro, the deforestation has exploded, marking a +75.6%. A terrifying figure that translates into 13,235 km² of forest raza on the ground only between 2020 and 2021
The silent victims of this havoc are indigenous peoples. The Missionary Indigenist Council (CIMI) does not use the least terms, defining the four -year period of Bolsonaro “the darkest period of a people abandoned to themselves”. The data confirm this: the invasions of the indigenous lands have grown exponentially, bringing with them an escalation of violence and murders, such as that of the defender of the indigenous rights Bruno Pereira and the journalist Dominic Phillips.
His government has dismantled the protections of indigenous peoples, encouraged the invasion of gold seekers and promoted laws to weaken the protection of the territories. The Land Grabbing, the lands robbery of the lands has legitimized.
Justice, today, appears Monca. He punished the coup, but not the man who declared war on the green lung of the planet. For those crimes, the Amazon and its guardian peoples are still waiting for a verdict which, perhaps, will never arrive.
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