Under the rightwing presidency of Jair Bolsonaro, Brazilians are once again witnessing intimidation tactics against anyone who speaks out against his government. Bolsonaro and his administration have attacked the press, specific journalists, a Supreme Court justice, opposition leaders, the health and science institution FIOCRUZ, and many others. This disturbing trend has just targeted two indigenous leaders. However, this latest strategy failed.
Brazil’s Federal Police agency subpoenaed Sônia Guajajara, the executive coordinator for the Articulation Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB) on April 26 to respond to charges of slander as well as the dissemination of fake news. These accusations are the result of her appearance in a 2020 eight-part web documentary series called Maracá. In it, Guajajara, along with dozens of other natives, activists, artists, and academics denounced numerous health protocol violations committed against indigenous communities by drawing links between Brazil’s 521 years of genocidal history to the current COVID-19 pandemic.
“I was intimidated by the federal police, as a representative of @apiboficial to testify in an inquiry about the Maracá web series,” Guajajara shared on Twitter on April 30, about the police action. “The persecution from this government is unacceptable and absurd! They won’t silence us!” she added. Guajajara was a Socialism and Liberty Party candidate during the 2018 Presidential elections and has been a fierce critic of Bolsonaro and his administration’s indigenous and environmental policies, and its handling of the pandemic.
Brazil’s federal police also summoned Almir Narayamoga Suruí, an indigenous Chief of the Paiter Suruí peoples, over allegations of defamation against Bolsonaro’s government. The National Indigenous Foundation (FUNAI), the Brazilian government agency created in 1967 under the Ministry of Justice to protect Indigenous peoples’ rights, filed both charges in mid-March.
After Guajajara’s tweet, dozens of politicians, organizations, and allies of indigenous communities expressed outrage over the government’s strategy. Former President Luis Inácio ‘Lula’ da Silva tweeted, “It is the government of lies chasing and trying to intimidate those who denounce the truth. They won’t win. My solidarity, @GuajajaraSonia.” Former Green Party Presidential Candidate, Mariana da Silva also expressed indignation by writing, “Once again I register my repudiation of the arbitrary and intimidating acts of the Bolsonaro government. My solidarity with @GuajajaraSonia and @narayamoga.”
APIB also released a statement denouncing the act as political and racist persecution to “criminalize the indigenous movement, intimidate [APIB], our network of grassroots organizations, and the leadership of Sônia Guajajara.”
With the overwhelming attention and counter lawsuits, a federal judge suspended the police probe into Guajajara on May 5 citing no indication of a crime being committed. And on May 6, the federal police decided to archive Almir Suruí’s case.
Celebrating these favorable decisions, Guajajara shared a video on social media thanking for all the support given to the indigenous movement and APIB that were targeted for resisting “against the constant violations of [our] rights and neglect by the Federal Government.”
Here is the background of how these two cases unfolded.
During an episode of the series Maracá called Healing Plan, Guajajara is heard speaking during a United Nations meeting in New York on April 2019 explaining how Brazil’s indigenous peoples honed the craft of resistance:
“…with the European caravels arrived swords and greed and the idea that we were not masters of our own lands and lives. Despite the genocide over these five hundred years, we have managed to reach the 21st century.” She added, “During this period, many of us were enslaved, hundreds of people were decimated, and several cultures extinguished. The Europeans treated us as merchandise, or as a major obstacle to their idea of progress. We resisted the colonial period. We resisted the empire. We resisted even the military dictatorship [1964-1985], which killed more than 8,000 indigenous people.”
Last year, APIB released Maracá as part of an international campaign to save indigenous lives and to highlight Bolsonaro’s mismanagement of the pandemic. The organization submitted the same complaints last August to Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court, which ruled in favor of the indigenous groups, and determined that the federal government must implement measures to contain the spread of the virus in indigenous communities. APIB is a grassroots organization that represents some 300 indigenous ethnic groups in Brazil. It was founded in 2005 with the mission to unify interests, strengthen communities, and advocate for indigenous rights.
In March FUNAI sent a slander complaint against Guajajara and Almir Suruí to the federal police, and on April 26, a federal agent contacted her to respond to the charges.
Following Guajajara probe, the federal police also questioned Almir Suruí on April 30. He was similarly being charged with defamation for seeking financial help to fight the pandemic during a virtual campaign from September 2020 called “Forest Peoples against COVID-19.”
“We are always saying that the government has not dealt with indigenous issues in a respectful way, [especially] when it comes to indigenous policy and land management. But this is not defamation,” he told columnist Rubens Valente. “They want us to back off, but we are going to continue fighting,” he added.
Then a federal agent called Almir’s nephew, Rubens Suruí about the virtual campaign. “I was surprised,” Rubens told the columnist. “The action was to collect funds to help the Paiter Suruí peoples to stay on their land during the pandemic and not have to go to the cities and get contaminated. [It was also used] to buy cleaning products and food,” he explained.
Ramirez Andrade, the lawyer representing the Paiter Suruí peoples, told Valente that the interrogation of both men by the federal police via the popular texting software, “WhatsApp” was not a standard procedure. “This is an unprecedented, unusual situation,” the lawyer said. He added, “the strange thing is to investigate a relief campaign and use it to say that, when asking for help, the indigenous people would be defaming the government.”
On May 6, the federal police announced they had stopped investigating Almir.
Although the Brazilian native rights’ movement succeeded on these two cases, activists have refused to acquiesce. That’s because Bolsonaro and his administration are still targeting their critics and they remain in charge of the COVID crisis in Brazil, which has had devastating impacts on indigenous communities.
Handling of the Pandemic
The indigenous leaders’ characterization of Bolsonaro’s mishandling of the pandemic is not an exaggeration. On April 12, 2021, Brazil’s Senate opened a Parliamentary Committee Inquiry (CPI) to investigate “actions and omissions by the federal government in facing the pandemic and the collapse of the healthcare system” across the country. With the ongoing inquiry, indigenous communities also want to be heard. They are seeking ways to expose how their people have been treated during the pandemic and the lack of the federal government’s response to combat the virus from reaching their lands.
On April 30, Joênia Wapichana, the first indigenous Congresswoman elected to office, presented data and complaints from indigenous organizations during a Senate public hearing. At the meeting she requested that the CPI called upon others to testify, including authorities responsible for the implementation of local and national indigenous healthcare protocols, indigenous leaders, and victims’ family members. In her view this administration committed “gross mistakes, omission, denialism and even prejudice” against indigenous communities and needs to be scrutinized.
“It got to a point when I didn’t want to look at my cell phone due to sadness [because] there were messages about indigenous deaths and reports that many were dying due to lack of drugs for intubation,” Wapichana commented at the hearing.
According to APIB’s epidemiological bulletin as of May 7, more than 53,641 cases and 1,063 deaths have been confirmed amongst indigenous communities. Brazil has about 850,000 indigenous peoples, representing a .4% of the country’s population.
The Congresswoman also handed over other complaints to Senators, which include the lack of access to clean water and adequate sanitary conditions at an indigenous shelter; an increase of illegal mining in indigenous lands during the pandemic; accounts that a health employee was selling COVID-vaccines to miners for gold instead of inoculating indigenous communities; low vaccination rates due to ‘fake news’ disseminated by President Bolsonaro and religious groups; lack of intensive care units and oxygen; and the militarization of indigenous healthcare’s management, which prescribed the use of the drug hydroxychloroquine to treat infected indigenous people.
Although the allegation about the military’s distribution of the hydroxychloroquine drug to indigenous communities is being discussed at the CPI, as of today, indigenous peoples have not been invited to testify about it or how the pandemic crisis has affected them. And despite these two victories, Bolsonaro’s critics see these latest police charges as yet another tactic to censor and intimidate them and expect to be targeted again.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
