MPF files lawsuit against Denarium for speeches about indigenous people – 06/29/2023 – Panel

The Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office filed a public civil action against the government of Roraima due to statements considered discriminatory against indigenous peoples made by Governor Antonio Denarium (PP) in an interview with the Panel, in January.

In the action, the MPF requests the government to withdraw through a video with the Chief Executive released on the official website and on social networks and compensation for collective moral damages in the amount of R$ 1 million, which would be applied in actions in favor of the people of Yanomami Indigenous Land.

The governor’s statements to the column took place in the context of the humanitarian crisis of the Yanomami, shortly after President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) declared a public health emergency after receiving images of indigenous people with severe malnutrition and visiting Roraima.

In the interview, Denarium stated that the indigenous people “have to acculturate, they can no longer stay in the middle of the forest, looking like animals. They have to be there properly, with a road, school, health center, doing their own farming, producing cassava, flour”.

According to the MPF piece, the declaration despises and subjugates autonomy, social organization and the indigenous ways of creating, doing and living. “By comparing them to ‘animals’, it reifies the ethnic group, relegating it to a sub-human condition”, writes Alisson Marugal, Public Prosecutor.

Denarium also said, in the interview, that malnutrition does not exist only in the state, and it is not possible to link mining to the situation of the indigenous people who live in Roraima.

“When you talk about malnutrition, you have it all over Brazil. If you go to São Paulo, there are children with malnutrition. And I’m talking about the normal, non-indigenous population. If you go to Bahia, which has a road and everything, they live practically within the city I was watching a report about Pataxó Indians with malnutrition. Here in Roraima, 80% of the indigenous people are already acculturated, that is, they have a good relationship with white people”, he said.

PRESENT LINK: Did you like this text? Subscriber can release five free hits of any link per day. Just click the blue F below.