“Will Lula be called a genocide?”

Senator and former Minister of Women, Family and Human Rights Damares Alves (Republicanos-DF) responded, in an interview with the program Assunto Capital, from People’s Gazettethe accusations that she and former president Jair Bolsonaro (PL) were responsible for the deaths of indigenous Yanomami, revealed in January 2023.

“I assumed [o mandato no Senado, em fevereiro de 2023] under the cover of being genocidal and murderous. And that was very painful for me, because I work with indigenous children. I hadn’t been a minister for a year, because I stopped being a minister in March 2022. And detail: indigenous policy wasn’t mine,” he said, remembering that, even at the beginning of former president Jair Bolsonaro’s government, in 2019, Funai was transferred, by Congress, from the Human Rights department to the Ministry of Justice, then under the command of Senator Sergio Moro (União Brasil-PR).

“So, I couldn’t get involved in indigenous politics because I had institutional limits. I can’t get into my colleague’s folder. So, I didn’t take care of indigenous politics. On the contrary: I couldn’t enter the Yanomami area, the NGOs wouldn’t let the Minister of Human Rights enter”, he complained. “But when those images burst, who was to blame? The Bolsonarista and Bolsonaro. I got on the plane and people called me a murderer”, said the senator in the interview with Assunto Capital (see below).

At the beginning of last year, under the government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT), the Ministry of Health released images of Yanomami children in serious health conditions, with malnutrition and malaria. The ministry declared a public health emergency and the president created a committee to provide assistance to the population of the indigenous reserve. In February, after visiting the region, Lula spoke of “genocide committed against the Yanomami people” and that it was necessary to remove miners who were “murdering children, destroying forests and poisoning rivers and fish with mercury”.

Preliminary and partial data, released at the time, showed the deaths of at least 1,049 indigenous people in the previous four years (259 in 2019, 332 in 2020, 249 in 2021 and 209 in 2022). At the beginning of January this year, the Ministry of Health updated the numbers, reporting that in 2022, 343 individuals died and in 2023, 308. Once again, the humanitarian crisis drew attention due to the persistence of problems in the region, which include a lack of assistance health, continued illegal mining activities, isolation of people. New images of babies and children weakened by malnutrition were published in the press.

“Will Minister Sílvio [Almeida, dos Direitos Humanos] Will it be called genocidal? Minister Sônia [Guajajara] Will it be called genocidal? Will President Lula be called a genocide? They used images of skinny children, they hurt Bolsonaro’s soul, Damares’ soul, they accused us to the world. And they needed to arrest Damares, do you know why? They had to deliver an answer to the world: ‘we caught the culprit’. But there is no evidence that I was guilty of chronic malnutrition that affects the area”, said the former minister.

In the interview, Damares became emotional and said that his adopted daughter, who is indigenous, received cell phone messages from colleagues accusing her of killing indigenous people. “Do you know what it’s like to look into my daughter’s eyes and say: ‘it’s a lie’? The left is cruel. When I say they are vindictive… They wanted to arrest me, they couldn’t, they wanted to interrupt my inauguration”, he said, adding that three months after taking office, the Ethics Council refused to revoke his inauguration; a Senate committee concluded that she and Bolsonaro were not responsible.

Damares said that the government released images of malnourished children last year, “to convince the world that we need money from the Amazon Fund, to say that we needed to overturn the time frame, it was to attract the world’s attention, to left does nothing by chance. And they got a lot of money… Where’s the money?”, he questioned.

According to Damares, Bolsonaro wanted to solve the problem, but the pandemic and NGOs prevented effective action. “But there was a period when we couldn’t enter, because two years into the pandemic, no one could enter to avoid bringing disease to the Yanomami, and the left-wing NGOs were in charge of everything”, criticized the senator.

For her, the problem lies in the isolation policy. “Why does our indigenous people have to stay naked in the bush with a feather on their head? Why can’t we talk to these communities? Why can’t we have sustainable cities? The Indian is nomadic because he has to chase the game. ‘Ah, they love to walk in the forest.’ Is that really it?” she said. “May they live the culture, but live in a more decent way. Why throw them into the bush and tell them they want to live like animals? We need to review this hypocrisy, of leaving isolated Indians in the bush, because we have to have a large human zoo to show the world that we preserve culture”, she stated.

In the Yanomami Indigenous Land, around 28 thousand indigenous people live, in more than 300 villages, in an area of ​​10 million hectares, on the border between Amazonas and Roraima, in the Amazon.