Category Archives: Jair Bolsonaro
Fresh protests in Brazil against Bolsonaro’s handling of Covid pandemic
Country’s death toll nears 500,000 as opposition to the president grows and vaccination rates remain low
Thousands of Brazilians returned to the streets on Saturday in protest against the response of Jair Bolsonaro’s administration to a pandemic that has killed close on half a million people in the country – the most after the United States.
On the second day of demonstrations in less than a month, the anti-Bolsonaro mobilisation is gaining momentum amid an ascendant curve of Covid-19 infections, while only 11% of 212 million Brazilians have been fully vaccinated, according to local media.
Continue reading...A silent decimation: South America’s losing battle against Covid
Strained and underfunded health systems, economics and misinformation have all led to a surge in deaths
The cold, tired and desperate relatives camped outside the Barrio Obrero general hospital in Asunción don’t need charts or datasets to confirm what they can see with their own eyes.
As Paraguay records the world’s highest daily proportion of Covid deaths, the huddled families wait for news of their loved ones – and for the sudden requests for medicine and supplies that the country’s chronically underfunded health system cannot provide.
Continue reading...Jair Bolsonaro fined for not wearing mask at São Paulo biker rally – video report
The Brazilian president led thousands of supporters through the streets of São Paulo on Saturday, and was fined for failing to wear a face mask in violation of local Covid-19 measures. The state government press office said a fine equivalent to about $110 (£78) had been imposed. Bolsonaro’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment
Continue reading...Did Brazil’s evangelical superstar have her husband killed?
Flordelis grew up in a Rio favela, but rose to fame after adopting more than 50 children, becoming a hugely successful gospel singer and winning a seat in congress. And now she is on trial for murder
When Flordelis dos Santos de Souza boarded an air force jet from Rio de Janeiro to Brasília on the morning of 1 January 2019, she felt she was witnessing the beginning of a new dawn. Brazil was about to install a far-right religious nationalist, Jair Bolsonaro, as president, and she, a black gospel singer from one of Rio’s most violent and impoverished favelas, had won a seat in parliament, asserting her place among her country’s powerful evangelical elite. At 57, she was a church leader and a social crusader, celebrated for standing up to some of Rio’s most dangerous gangsters and for taking in dozens of children rescued from lives of deprivation and crime. She had devoted her life to building a multimillion-dollar evangelical empire, which had grown to include nine churches. Now she was a politician, too.
At her side was her husband, Anderson do Carmo de Souza, also a preacher, 16 years her junior, who managed her political career. “I want to thank all of you who had faith and gave Flor a place in this movement to change Brazil, isn’t that right love?” Anderson said into a camera as the pair stood on the airport runway, waiting to fly to the capital at the invitation of one of the country’s most powerful politicians, Rodrigo Maia, then speaker of the lower house.
Continue reading...‘No to dictatorship’: thousands of Brazilians rally against Bolsonaro – video
Brazilians staged protests against President Jair Bolsonaro's handling of the Covid-19 pandemic in at least 200 cities and towns across the country on Saturday, carrying signs such as 'Out with Bolsonaro' and 'Impeachment now'.
Bolsonaro's popularity has plummeted during the coronavirus crisis, which has killed more than 450,000 Brazilians as the far-right leader played down its severity, dismissed mask wearing and cast doubt on the importance of vaccines.
Organised by leftist political parties, unions and student associations, Saturday's protests in the capital, Brasilia, and in Rio de Janeiro were peaceful but in the north-eastern city of Recife, police threw teargas and shot rubber bullets.
Continue reading...Tens of thousands of Brazilians march to demand Bolsonaro’s impeachment
Protests in over 200 cities and towns in Brazil sparked by president’s handling of the Covid pandemic
Tens of thousands of protesters have poured on to the streets of Brazil’s largest cities to demand the impeachment of President Jair Bolsonaro over his catastrophic response to a coronavirus pandemic that has claimed nearly half a million Brazilian lives.
The demonstrators turned out in more than 200 cities and towns for what is the biggest anti-Bolsonaro mobilisation since Brazil’s Covid outbreak began
Continue reading...Brazil aerial photos show miners’ devastation of indigenous people’s land
Impact of thousands of wildcat goldminers shown as president Jair Bolsonaro is accused of trying to promote their illegal work
Rare and disturbing aerial photographs have laid bare the devastation being inflicted on Brazil’s largest reserve for indigenous people by thousands of wildcat goldminers whose illegal activities have accelerated under the country’s far-right leader, Jair Bolsonaro.
Activists believe as many as 20,000 garimpeiro prospectors are operating within the Yanomami reserve in northern Brazil using speedboats and light aircraft to penetrate the vast expanse of jungle near the border with Venezuela.
Continue reading...Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro leads motorcade rally in Rio amid coronavirus surge – video
Brazil's president Jair Bolsonaro has led a motorcade rally through Rio de Janeiro streets where thousands showed their support for the Brazilian leader, while COVID-19 infections surge and the death toll mounts across the South American country. Brazil has now registered 16 million cases since the pandemic began, and the official death toll stands at 448,208, according to ministry data
Continue reading...Thousands rally at ‘obscene’ motorcade for Jair Bolsonaro
After 450,000 Covid deaths, president parades through Rio in effort to reenergnise far right
The Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, has led a raucous column of motorcycle enthusiasts through the streets of Rio in an attempt to reenergise his flagging far-right movement as public anger grows over his handling of the country’s Covid outbreak.
Thousands of flag-waving Bolsonaristas gathered outside the Olympic Park in west Rio on Sunday morning for the two-wheeled show of support before roaring east towards the southern beach districts and city centre, with Bolsonaro near the front.
Continue reading...‘Brazil is a global pariah’: Lula on his plot to end reign of ‘psychopath’ Bolsonaro
Brazil’s former leftist leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva left no doubt he was planning a finale to a dramatic political career
Brazil can be rescued after being turned into a Covid-stricken global outcast by its “psychopath” president Jair Bolsonaro, the politician best placed to defeat him in next year’s presidential election has insisted.
In an interview with the Guardian, Brazil’s former leftist leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva – who is widely tipped to challenge Bolsonaro for the presidency after regaining his political rights – stopped short of explicitly confirming he would run. But Lula, who rose from rural poverty to become Brazil’s first working-class president, left no doubt he was plotting an extraordinary finale to one of the world’s most enduring and dramatic political careers.
Continue reading...‘They came to kill’: Rio’s deadliest favela police raid sparks calls for change
Rio’s favelas have suffered countless horrors since the drug conflict began to intensify in the 1980s and the carnage in Jacarezinho has caused a wave of protest
Shaken, shoeless and with a gaping bullet wound to one of his feet, the young man staggered through Flávia Luciana’s front door at around 8am last Thursday as Rio’s decades-long drug conflict plumbed horrifying new depths.
“Help me! For the love of God! Help!” she remembers him pleading as he sought shelter inside.
Continue reading...Bolsonaro ignored repeated warnings about Covid, ex-health minister says
Luiz Henrique Mandetta tells senate inquiry president was aware his anti-scientific response risked ‘death on an enormous scale’
Jair Bolsonaro ignored repeated warnings that his anti-scientific response to Covid-19 was leading Brazil down an “extremely perilous path” and putting tens of thousands of lives at risk, the country’s former health minister has claimed.
Giving oral evidence to a senate inquiry into Brazil’s coronavirus calamity on Tuesday, Luiz Henrique Mandetta, who led the health ministry at the start of the pandemic, said he believed the Brazilian president’s conduct had helped generate an unnecessarily large tragedy.
Continue reading...Brazil begins parliamentary inquiry into Bolsonaro’s Covid response
Opponents hope investigation will torpedo chances of re-election for far-right president
Brazil’s congress has launched a parliamentary inquiry into what critics call Jair Bolsonaro’s disastrous and potentially criminal response to a Covid pandemic that has killed nearly 400,000 Brazilians.
The politically charged investigation, which rivals of Brazil’s far-right president hope will torpedo his chances of re-election, will be conducted by 11 of the country’s 81 senators, including several of Bolsonaro’s fiercest opponents.
Continue reading...Latin America’s lack of a united front on Covid has had disastrous consequences | Andre Pagliarini
The regional coordination of the pink tide era has given way to various governments, left and right, going it alone
A terse report filed from São Paulo, Brazil, appeared in the 17 March 1919 edition of the New York Times. It read: “Influenza again has appeared here in epidemic form. The Government is taking steps to prevent the spread of the disease.” Just over one hundred years later, faced with another pandemic, the Brazilian government has taken a different approach. President Jair Bolsonaro, the far-right extremist elected in 2018, has repeatedly downplayed the coronavirus, urging citizens to suck it up and get back to work so that the economy can once again get moving.
The president has frequently appeared in public places without a mask, stopping to greet supporters, creating potential super-spreader events as a matter of course. Bolsonaro’s recklessness has had terrible consequences: Latin America’s largest nation has been ravaged by the pandemic, with more than 13m cases.
Continue reading...Brazil’s Covid-19 response is worst in the world, says Médecins Sans Frontières
The medical NGO says government negligence is costing lives as death toll exceeds 362,000, second only to US
The Brazilian government’s negligent response to Covid-19 has plunged the South American country into a snowballing “humanitarian catastrophe” that is likely to intensify in the coming weeks, the medical NGO Médecins Sans Frontières has warned.
“I have to be very clear in this: the Brazilian authorities’ negligence is costing lives,” the group’s international president, Christos Christou, told reporters on Thursday after Brazil’s official death toll rose to more than 362,000, second only to the US.
Continue reading...Bolsonaro’s ‘genocidal’ Covid response has led to Brazilian catastrophe, Dilma Rousseff says
Former president tells Guardian Brazil faces perhaps gravest moment in its history and is ‘adrift on an ocean of hunger and disease’
Jair Bolsonaro’s perverse and “genocidal” response to one of the world’s deadliest Covid outbreaks has left Brazil “adrift on an ocean of hunger and disease”, the country’s former president Dilma Rousseff has claimed.
Speaking to the Guardian this week – as Brazil’s coronavirus death toll hit devastating new heights, with more than 12,000 deaths in the last three days – Rousseff said her country faced perhaps the gravest moment in its history.
Continue reading...Brazil’s coronavirus death toll passes 4,000 a day for first time
Covid crisis ‘out of control’, says expert as president Jair Bolsonaro continues to resist lockdown
Brazil’s coronavirus catastrophe has deepened further after more than 4,000 daily deaths were reported for the first time since the outbreak began in February last year.
At least 4,195 people were reported to have lost their lives on Tuesday, taking Brazil’s total death toll – the world’s second highest after the US – to nearly 337,000.
Continue reading...Amid Brazil’s tragedy, our hope is the prospect of Bolsonaro’s defeat next year | Celso Amorim
As Covid deaths climb the president seems to be throwing the country into an abyss that will be difficult to escape from
It is no exaggeration to say that Brazil is going through the most serious crisis in its history. With nearly 4,000 deaths a day and moving quickly towards a figure of 500,000 people killed by Covid-19, Brazil is not just the epicentre of the pandemic. It has also become the breeding ground for new variants of the virus: a real threat to its own people and the whole of humankind.
In the midst of a public health war that is being lost, its president, Jair Bolsonaro, is throwing the country more deeply into an abyss, from where it will be hard to emerge. Apart from the suffering caused to hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of relatives and friends of the victims, the economy has been plunged into recession, with 14% of the workforce condemned to the dole. In contrast to what happened during the first wave of the pandemic, when Congress forced the government to distribute relatively significant financial aid to a large portion of the population, now fewer people will benefit with a smaller amount.
Continue reading...Brazil: calls grow for removal of ‘coup-mongering’ Bolsonaro as crisis builds
Opposition leaders demand impeachment for what they say is president’s illegal attempt to co-opt the country’s armed forces
Prominent leaders of Brazil’s opposition have called for president Jair Bolsonaro to be immediately removed from office to prevent his “coup-mongering, authoritarian delusions” becoming a reality.
“We cannot be bystanders to this barbarism,” congressman Marcelo Freixo said on Wednesday as parliamentarians demanded Bolsonaro’s impeachment for what they called his illegal attempt to co-opt the armed forces.
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