Category Archives: Brazil

Brazil football star Neymar backs far-right Bolsonaro days before election

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Paris Saint-Germain forward posts video in support of far-right president, who is trailing badly in polls ahead of Sunday’s vote

The Brazilian football star Neymar has come out in support of President Jair Bolsonaro, three days before the far-right leader looks set to lose a bitter re-election race against his leftist rival Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

Lounging in a gaming chair, the Paris Saint-Germain forward recorded a video singing along to a Bolsonaro jingle and making V signs with both hands to signify 22, the number of Bolsonaro’s party as it appears on Brazil’s electronic ballots.

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More than 1,700 environmental activists murdered in the past decade – report

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Figures likely to be an underestimate, says Global Witness, as land defenders are killed by hitmen, crime groups and governments

More than 1,700 murders of environmental activists were recorded over the past decade, an average of a killing nearly every two days, according to a new report.

Killed by hitmen, organised crime groups and their own governments, at least 1,733 land and environmental defenders were murdered between 2012 and 2021, figures from Global Witness show, with Brazil, Colombia, the Philippines, Mexico and Honduras the deadliest countries.

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‘Lift this country up’: trans pioneer Erika Hilton seeks Brazil election win

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The woman likely to be the first transgender member of parliament says she still feels threat hanging over her

No one does political rags to riches stories quite like Brazil, but even in a nation where the most celebrated president in decades once shined shoes to survive, the story of Erika Hilton takes some beating.

The transgender teenager was kicked out of her house aged 14 and spent several years as a sex worker in rural Brazil before reconnecting with her mother and studying teaching and gerontology at university.

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‘This land belonged to us’: Nestlé supply chain linked to disputed Indigenous territory

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Investigation reveals cattle raised on Mỹky territory ended up in global supply chain including food giant

On one side of the fence, in dense forest, the Mỹky people grow their crops: cassava, pequi and cabriteiro fruit. On the other side, ranchers raise cattle on devastated land. That land is the Mỹky’s, they say.

Xinuxi Mỹky, the village elder, says this region used to be a forest where different villages thrived. Only one now remains and the farms have cut into that land as well. “This pasture, where the whites live, was also our village, but now they are raising cattle. The land belonged to us: Indigenous peoples.”

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Bolsonaro tries red scare tactics in Brazil election by raising spectre of Nicaragua

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Brazil’s far-right president claims that leftwing rival Lula will repress clergy like Ortega but so far with little apparent success

More than 4,000km and an ideological abyss separate the capitals of Nicaragua and Brazil, where an acrimonious race for the presidency is under way.

But the Central American country has found itself at the centre of Brazil’s election debate as its far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro seeks to weaponise Daniel Ortega’s authoritarian crackdown on the Catholic church to attack his leftist challenger, the former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

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Met handcuff peaceful anti-Bolsonaro protester to delight of Brazil’s far right

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Police accused of unnecessary force as president’s son shares video of detention to show Britons ‘don’t like communists either’

The Metropolitan police have been accused of using unnecessary force and handing a propaganda coup to Brazil’s far right after a peaceful demonstrator was detained and handcuffed during a protest outside the Brazilian ambassador’s London residence.

Ali Rocha, a 50-year-old Brazilian and British citizen, and her flatmate were intercepted by officers on Sunday lunchtime as they joined a protest against Brazil’s radical rightwing president, Jair Bolsonaro, who was in the UK for the Queen’s funeral.

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Jair Bolsonaro uses visit to London for Queen’s funeral as ‘election soapbox’

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Speaking from the balcony of his ambassador’s home, Brazilian president rounds on leftists, abortion and ‘gender ideology’

Brazil’s far-right president Jair Bolsonaro has been accused of using the Queen’s funeral as a political soapbox after he flew into London to deliver a speech to supporters about the dangers of leftists, abortion and “gender ideology”.

Speaking from the balcony of the Brazilian ambassador’s 19th-century Mayfair home on Sunday, the South American populist voiced “profound respect” for the royal family and UK citizens and claimed that honouring Queen Elizabeth II was the “main objective” of his visit to London.

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‘Olê, olá, Lula!’ Brazil’s voters sing for a heroic comeback to banish Bolsonaro

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Polls show former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is on course for a return to power

It was a scene that could have been plucked from Brazil’s history books: an enraptured crowd, a sea of flags and, on stage above them, a bearded leftist in a bright red shirt.

“The president of hope is here!” the master of ceremonies roared as the star of the show arrived in a police convoy to address the people whose country he is promising to save.

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Bolsonaro fan stabs Lula supporter as Brazil election turns deadly

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Political violence breaks out in Mato Grosso state after argument between followers of rival presidential candidates

A supporter of Brazil’s far-right president Jair Bolsonaro has stabbed to death a backer of leftist former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, in the latest instance of rising political tensions in the buildup to this year’s election.

The violence happened in the west-central state of Mato Grosso, after tempers frayed during an argument over support for the two candidates. Bolsonaro trails Lula in the polls in an election riven by intense polarisation.

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Brazilian forest guardian killed weeks after joining Amazon summit

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Janildo Oliveira Guajajara had recently taken part in an Amazon assembly organised by murdered Indigenous specialist Bruno Pereira

A rainforest activist from one of Brazil’s leading Indigenous protection groups has been killed just weeks after participating in an Amazon assembly organised by the murdered Indigenous specialist Bruno Pereira.

Janildo Oliveira Guajajara, a member of the Guardiões da Floresta (Forest Guardians) collective, was reportedly shot dead in the early hours of Saturday near the Araribóia Indigenous territory where he lived.

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Large parts of Amazon may never recover, major study says

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Swathes of rainforest have reached tipping point, research by scientists and Indigenous organisations concludes

Environmental destruction in parts of the Amazon is so complete that swathes of the rainforest have reached tipping point and might never be able to recover, a major study carried out by scientists and Indigenous organisations has found.

“The tipping point is not a future scenario but rather a stage already present in some areas of the region,” the report concludes. “Brazil and Bolivia concentrate 90% of all combined deforestation and degradation. As a result, savannization is already taking place in both countries.”

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Prankster seizes Bolsonaro website and turns president into ‘snake-tongued liar’

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Anonymous objector commandeers bolsonaro.com.br domain name and creates devastating takedown of far-right leader

An internet prankster has hijacked a website long used to glorify Brazil’s far-right president and turned it into a devastating online excoriation of Jair Bolsonaro’s “clownish”, “neo-fascist” government.

Bolsonaro and his three politician sons have reportedly used the bolsonaro.com.br domain as an official mouthpiece since the early 2000s.

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Bolsonaro under fire over claims family paid for 51 properties in cash

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Brazilian president must ‘explain the origins of this money’, says reporter behind seven-month investigation

Jair Bolsonaro’s murky family finances have come under renewed scrutiny after claims the Brazilian president and close relatives used cash to pay for more than 50 properties worth millions of dollars.

The allegations – the result of a seven-month investigation by the Brazilian news group UOL – suggest that between 1990 and 2022, members of the Bolsonaro clan repeatedly used large sums of cash to pay for flats, houses and plots of land in cities including Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.

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Amazon activists mourn death of ‘man of the hole’, last of his tribe

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Man resisted all attempts to contact him, laying traps and firing arrows at anyone who came too close

An unidentified and charismatic Indigenous man thought to have been the last of his tribe has died in the Brazilian Amazon, causing consternation among activists lamenting the loss of another ethnic language and culture.

The solitary and mysterious man was known only as the Índio do Buraco, or the “Indigenous man of the hole”, because he spent much of his existence hiding or sheltering in pits he dug in the ground.

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Heart of Brazil’s first emperor returns after nearly 200 years for ‘state visit’

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Pedro I declared independence from Portugal in 1822, and relic is now at the centre of politically charged election year celebrations

Nearly two centuries after it was cut from his corpse and preserved in formaldehyde, the heart of Emperor Pedro I, who declared Brazil’s independence from Portugal, has returned for politically charged commemorations of the South American country’s 200th birthday.

Dom Pedro, a beloved figure in both Brazilian and Portuguese history, has been divided between the two countries in death – his heart enshrined in a church in Porto, Portugal, and the rest of his remains in an independence monument in São Paulo, Brazil.

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Lula vows to take on Amazon crime if returned to power in Brazil elections

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Ex-president says he will clamp down on illegal miners and loggers after murders of Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira

The leading candidate to become Brazil’s next president has vowed to launch a major crackdown on the illegal miners and loggers laying waste to the Amazon in the wake of the “barbaric” murders of the Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira and the British journalist Dom Phillips.

Speaking to foreign journalists in São Paulo, former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva paid tribute to the two men, who were gunned down in June while documenting the historic assault on Indigenous lands that has unfolded under Brazil’s current leader, Jair Bolsonaro.

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Leading grain traders ‘sourcing soy beans from Brazilian farm linked to abuse’

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Bunge and Cargill, behind more than 30% of soy exports to EU and UK, accused of exposing suppliers to link with indigenous rights violations

Two of the world’s biggest grain traders are sourcing soy from a Brazilian farm linked to abuses of indigenous rights and land, a report from the environmental group Earthsight claims

Earthsight named the companies as Bunge and Cargill and said they sourced soy produced on a farm located on ancestral land of the Kaiowá indigenous group.

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Police call for Bolsonaro to be charged for spreading Covid misinformation

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Brazil’s federal police ask supreme court to charge president over bogus claims in October 2021 social media broadcast

Brazilian federal police have called for President Jair Bolsonaro to be charged with spreading fake information about a coronavirus outbreak that has killed more than 680,000 of his citizens, including bogus claims of a link between Aids and Covid vaccines.

Bolsonaro’s anti-scientific response to a disease he called “a bit of a cold” has been internationally condemned and the subject of a congressional inquiry in which the far-right populist was accused of deliberately delaying vaccine purchases and promoting quack “cures” such as hydroxychloroquine.

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Lula says Bolsonaro ‘possessed by devil’ as he launches Brazil election campaign

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Leftwing frontrunner counters far-right president’s efforts to demonize him with evangelical voters in bitterly divided country

Brazil’s former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has formally launched his campaign to reclaim the presidency with a ferocious broadside against his rival, Jair Bolsonaro, who he claimed was “possessed by the devil”.

Lula’s rebuke came on the first official day of campaigning before Brazil’s October election when 156.5 million citizens will choose the next leader of a bitterly divided nation.

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Brazil’s presidential campaign launches amid fears of violence and upheaval

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Far-right president Jair Bolsonaro is trailing in the polls and has hinted he will not cede power if defeated

Campaigning in Brazil’s most important election for years formally gets under way this week amid fears of political violence on the campaign trail and possible turmoil before and after the October ballots.

Far-right president Jair Bolsonaro is trailing in the polls and has hinted he will not give up power if defeated by the leftist frontrunner and former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

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