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Investigate Bolsonaro for genocide says Brazil's Marina Silva

Former president Jair Bolsonaro should be investigated for genocide, Brazil’s environment minister, Marina Silva, has said, as she prepares an operation to drive illegal goldminers from the site of a humanitarian disaster on Indigenous land.

The president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, recently declared an emergency after photos emerged of emaciated children and elderly people in the region and the Sumaúma news platform revealed 570 Yanomami infants died from preventable diseases during Bolsonaro’s term, an increase of 29% on the previous four years.

In the coming days, armed police and environmental protection agents will launch the first of a series of operations by plane and helicopter to expel thousands of miners, who proliferated in Brazil’s Yanomami Indigenous territory during Bolsonaro’s administration, contaminating Amazonian rivers, wrecking the rainforest and spawning Brazil’s worst health crisis in living memory.

In a wide-ranging interview, Silva said Bolsonaro should be held accountable. “I think he should be investigated for committing genocide,” she said. “The ministry of justice itself is already forwarding the action.”

Silva served as environment minister during the first Lula administration from 2003 to 2006 and put in place policies that led to an 83% reduction in Amazon deforestation. She said Bolsonaro had “annihilated” environmental policy, which had a severe impact on forest dwellers and set back the country’s goals to conserve nature and reduce carbon emissions.

Read more at the Guardian 

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