Ordinance prohibiting religious access to Yanomamis is unconstitutional

A joint ordinance by the Ministry of Health in partnership with the National Foundation for Indigenous Peoples (Funai), published last Wednesday (1st), prohibited access by religious people and the use of images with references to religion by people who enter the villages . The ban is flagrantly unconstitutional, according to experts consulted by the People’s Gazette.

“The exercise of any religious activities with indigenous peoples is strictly prohibited, as well as the use of clothes with religious images or expressions”, says item IV of the ordinance in a device on religious proselytism. The document, which will be in force for the duration of the state of emergency decreed on January 20 due to the situation of the Yanomami, aims to establish rules of conduct in indigenous lands.

For Constitutional Law professor André Uliano, the ordinance violates both religious freedom and indigenous cultural autonomy, and could be classified as a crime in the law against racism, which provides for penalties for those who practice discrimination based on religion. According to him, the State cannot prevent religious proselytism, which is part of freedom of religious expression, in an understanding already enshrined by the Federal Supreme Court (STF). “Who decides whether there will be religious proselytism in the region are the indigenous people, not the government”, he says.

Uliano explains that administrative acts have adequacy as the first requirement, that is, “the act has to be apt, suitable, for the purpose that it seeks to favor”. “In this case, the end is to end the health and food crisis. What does proselytism have to do with it? Is anyone going to stop going hungry, destitute and suffering from disease by stopping hearing about Jesus? The measure is inappropriate and disreputable and therefore unconstitutional,” he explains.

Yanomamis who have converted to certain religions, for example, cannot receive care from ministers of their faith, which is unconstitutional. For Uliano, not being prevented by the State from receiving religious services is an absolute right. “The Constitution even obliges that internment establishments have religious attendance, as in the Army or in prisons, for example”, he emphasizes.

For lawyer Miguel Vidigal, director of the Union of Catholic Jurists of São Paulo (Ujucasp), the prohibition of contact between religious people and Yanomamis is a “religious intolerance practiced by the Brazilian State, which affects not only missionaries, but above all indigenous people who, prohibited from practicing any and all religious activities, they find themselves deprived of their freedom”.

Lawyer Thiago Vieira, president of the Brazilian Institute of Law and Religion (IBDR), explains that proselytism is vital for universalizing religions, that is, those in which the faithful believe that there is a universal call from God to convert people. “They aim to bring this truth to the whole world. They are not religions for a group of people, for a place, for a region, for a community and in a space of time. There are no limitations for these religions. Their core idea is to cover the world and get their message out to everyone,” he says.

The ordinance, according to Vieira, has several unconstitutionalities. “It violates the entire plexus of rights of religious freedom and freedom of belief, in addition, finally, to being a violation of the secular State itself, of State secularism, because it is interference by the State within religion. What she is saying is this: you cannot do what your religion was born to do.”

A People’s Gazette contacted Funai and the Special Secretariat for Indigenous Health (Sesai) of the Ministry of Health on Thursday (2) to provide clarification on the ordinance that prohibits contact between religious people and Yanomami, but has not yet received a position from none of the organs. The following questions were asked:

• Isn’t the measure about prejudice against religious people, framed in the crime of racism?
• How can restricting religious activities with indigenous peoples help to avoid the calamity observed in Yanomami lands?
• In what way could someone responsible for assisting indigenous people who wore a T-shirt with the image of Our Lady, with a crucifix on it, or with the image of an orixá, for example, aggravate the tragedy observed in the Yanomami lands?
• Wouldn’t indigenous converts to religions outside their original tradition who wanted to receive care from ministers of these religions be victims of religious prejudice?

Christophobia and the Yanomami’s idea of ​​”static tradition” originated an ordinance, say experts

The hostility of anthropologists and members of some NGOs against Christian missionaries may have been the origin of the provision in the ordinance against religious proselytism, as pointed out by experts consulted by the People’s Gazette. There is, according to them, an ideological prejudice according to which Christianity would disturb the culture of the indigenous people.

Isaías Lobão, PhD in History from the University of Valencia and Master in Theology from the Superior School of Theology of São Leopoldo, has already been part of evangelizing missions in some villages. He claims that it is common among certain anthropologists the idea that the indigenous should be kept in their state of nature, and that this state would be immutable.

“They want to preserve culture without believing in the autonomy of peoples. It is a concept of cultural immobility, of those who believe that the Indian must be preserved without contact with other cultures. When we meet indigenous people, it’s as if we had to take a picture of that culture”, he says. “But the value judgment is interesting: the missionary cannot go, but the international NGO goes.”

Paradoxically, points out Lobão, this barrier created for ideological reasons can pave the way for the destruction of indigenous culture. Making it difficult for religious people to enter, in his opinion, could serve precisely to make the Indians more susceptible to contact with harmful external cultural elements, such as the action of miners who enter villages and introduce the consumption of alcohol and drugs.

Lobão explains that there are missionaries especially dedicated to the codification of indigenous languages, such as those from the mission Aliança Linguística Evangélica Missionária (Alem), which trains evangelists to work on grammar codification and the translation of the Bible and other books for indigenous cultures. Such work with a tribe can take decades of effort.

“The missionaries work with the translation and codification of the unwritten language, because generally many of the languages ​​are spoken only. After coding, he can bring scripture into language and alphabetize that tribe. With that, he gives an opportunity both for the indigenous person to get to know the religion and to do whatever he wants with reading and writing”, he explains.

Often the same anthropologists who demonstrate ideological hostility against Christians end up taking advantage of the linguistic maps produced by the missionaries. “In some classes at the University of Brasília (UnB) that I attended, they used the linguistic maps of the missions, but hiding the logo of the mission that made the map”, says Lobão, who is evangelical and graduated in History at UnB.

Among Catholics, the ordinance is also seen as prejudiced. In a recent text published in People’s GazetteMiguel Vidigal, director of Ujucasp, points out that “there is no institution in Brazilian history that has been on the side of indigenous peoples like the Catholic Church”, and that Catholicism has historically served as a protector of indigenous peoples against State abuses.

“It was common to see states abusing conquered peoples without any shame. The Church, which still had enormous influence in the world, reaffirmed everything its doctrine teaches in terms of charity, protection and respect for others, including indigenous peoples”, she says.

Therefore, for Vidigal, the device against religious proselytism is “a historical and moral injustice”. “It was not the Catholic Church that put those sacrificed Yanomami people in those conditions. I dare say that if it weren’t for the missionaries, the situation would be much worse. By penalizing the Church, preventing it from any and all religious activity, the Brazilian State punishes the Church for something it is not responsible for.”