Amnesty Int’l condemns Bolsonaro

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP):

Amnesty International launched a campaign called ‘Brazil for Everyone’ Tuesday to counter what it calls President Jair Bolsonaro’s “anti-human-rights” agenda.

The group said that Bolsonaro’s rhetoric against human rights throughout his career is now “being translated into concrete measures and actions that threaten and violate the human rights of all people in Brazil”.

It cited measures like Bolsonaro’s moves to ease gun laws, a tougher new drug policy, and what it said are attempts “to interfere unduly in the work of civil-society organisations.”

It also said Bolsonaro was infringing on the rights of Brazil’s indigenous people and communities of descendants of enslaved people.

Amnesty’s Brazil executive director, Jurema Werneck, noted that when Bolsonaro was elected, the organisation warned of the risk Bolsonaro represented to human rights.

“We are beginning to see that our concerns were justified,” she said.

Erika Guevara-Rosas, the Amnesty International Americas director, said Bolsonaro’s actions are part of a worrying trend in the region.

“It is an extremely delicate time in the Americas,” she said, citing Central Americans in need of protection in the United States and leaders accused of promoting violence and persecuting opponents in Venezuela and Nicaragua.