The Flawed Legal Battle to Save Brazil’s Indigenous from COVID-19
The Flawed Legal Battle to Save Brazil’s Indigenous from COVID-19
A Supreme Court decision sounds encouraging on the surface – but will likely fail to protect indigenous peoples in practice.
SÃO PAULO – “It is not an exaggeration to warn this court that we do have a serious risk of genocide” Those were the strong words solemnly spoken by the lawyer Luiz Eloy Terena, himself an indigenous person, during an online hearing of the Brazil’s Supreme Court (known as STF for its initials in Portuguese) last week The seriousness of the charge meets the gravity of the situation in hand While legal circles discuss whether it meets the technical definition of genocide from their air-conditioned rooms, indigenous people are dying of COVID-19 at an alarming rate The disease...
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