This article was published in partnership with Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, independent news outlet that covers climate, energy and the environment. It is part of “The Fifth Crime,” a series on ecocide.
On a Tuesday afternoon in late March 2020, Zezico Rodrigues Guajajara was killed by gunmen as he was driving a motorbike near his home village in Maranhao, Brazil.
A member of the Guajajara tribe, he had worked for years to protect land in the Amazon belonging to his ancestors and other uncontacted, or isolated, tribes. For Zezico, fending off illegal incursions had become increasingly dangerous as emboldened logging and mining groups targeted him and other Indigenous environmental activists. He was the fifth Guajajara to be killed in a five-month period and one of over two dozen forest protectors killed in Brazil since 2019.
Indigenous chiefs and human rights organizations have accused Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro of enabling such killings through state policies that they say encourage the destruction of the Amazon for profit while failing to protect Indigenous people’s rights. They have asked the International Criminal Court to investigate whether the far-right leader’s actions — including weakening dozens of environmental protections and encouraging private development of the Amazon, leading to the displacement of Indigenous people and contributing to climate change — constitute crimes against humanity.
“Bolsonaro has been campaigning against Indigenous people and their rights since the first day he took office,” said Marcio Astrini, head of the environmental protection organization Climate Observatory. “In acts and speeches, he’s incentivizing land grabbers, illegal loggers and illegal miners to invade Indigenous areas, causing violence and deforestation. He is putting Indigenous communities and lives at risk.”
Astrini supports the investigation request and said the international court’s action is needed to stop Brazil’s government from facilitating illegal activity in the Amazon.
Brazil’s Embassy in Washington and its Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not respond to requests for comment. In response to questions from Inside Climate News and NBC News for a previous article, the Brazilian Embassy said Bolsonaro had “consistently championed” Indigenous people’s well-being and the preservation of the Amazon.
June 23, 202100:57
In public comments, Bolsonaro has staunchly defended Brazil’s right to develop the rainforest, citing the country’s sovereignty, and he has accused foreign leaders of wanting to impede Brazil’s lucrative agricultural and commodity export industries. His supporters also point out that Brazil has historically contributed very little to climate change compared to developed countries like the United States.
The International Criminal Court’s Office of the Prosecutor, which is weighing the investigation request, did not respond to a request for comment. The request for the court to launch an investigation into Bolsonaro is the latest turn in a growing debate over whether mass environmental damage should be prosecuted as an international crime.
Bolsonaro’s rampant deforestation of the Amazon, and the threat posed by climate change, have prompted world leaders like Pope Francis and French President Emmanuel Macron to support a campaign for a new international crime called “ecocide,” which would outlaw widespread environmental destruction. Supporters cite Bolsonaro’s actions in the Amazon as a prime example of ecocide happening in real time.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
