{"id":158169,"date":"2020-04-13T12:01:56","date_gmt":"2020-04-13T11:01:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=158169"},"modified":"2020-04-13T06:27:41","modified_gmt":"2020-04-13T05:27:41","slug":"brazil-bolsonaro-sabotages-anti-covid-19-efforts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2020\/04\/brazil-bolsonaro-sabotages-anti-covid-19-efforts\/","title":{"rendered":"Brazil: Bolsonaro Sabotages Anti-Covid-19 Efforts"},"content":{"rendered":"
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President Flouts Health Authorities\u2019 Advice, Undermines Access to Information<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Brazilian<\/a>Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro gives a press interview about coronavirus at the entrance of\u00a0 Palacio da Alvorada in Brasilia. \u00a9 2020 Agencia Estado via AP Images<\/span><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/header>\n

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10 Apr 2020<\/em> \u2013 President Jair Bolsonaro is putting Brazilians<\/a> in grave danger by urging them not to comply with social distancing and other measures to slow the spread of COVID-19 from state governments and his own Health Ministry, Human Rights Watch said today. He has also acted recklessly by disseminating misleading information about the pandemic.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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<\/span>\u201cFor weeks, Bolsonaro has been sabotaging the states\u2019 and his own Health Ministry\u2019s efforts to contain the spread of COVID-19 and putting the lives and health of Brazilians at grave risk,\u201d said Jos\u00e9 Miguel Vivanco<\/a>, Americas director at Human Rights Watch.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo avoid preventable deaths from this pandemic, leaders should ensure that people have access to accurate, evidence-based information essential to protecting their health. President Bolsonaro is doing everything but that.\u201d<\/p>\n

As of April 10, 2020, Brazil had 18,397 confirmed cases of COVID-19, and 974 Brazilians had died<\/a> from it.<\/p>\n

On March 20, Bolsonaro issued an executive order<\/a> to strip states of the authority to restrict people\u2019s movements to contain COVID-19. Four days later, the Supreme Court revoked<\/a> that order.<\/p>\n

On March 26, Bolsonaro issued a presidential decree<\/a> that exempted churches and lottery houses from state and municipal health regulations by classifying them as essential services, thus allowing people to congregate there. The next day, a federal court suspended that decree<\/a>, ruling that it violated federal law<\/a>. The court also barred the government from adopting measures against social distancing enacted by states.<\/p>\n

On March 23, Bolsonaro issued a presidential order<\/a> suspending deadlines for government agencies to respond to public information requests including explicitly on its own policies to address the health emergency.<\/p>\n

The deadline suspension would apply to government agencies that had asked their employees to stay in quarantine or work from home, or had taken \u201csimilar measures.\u201d If the government denies the information, the petitioner cannot appeal.<\/p>\n

The presidential order also suspended deadlines to provide other types of information in certain circumstances.<\/p>\n

This order followed an attempt by the Bolsonaro administration, in January 2019, to undermine Brazil\u2019s access to information law by issuing a decree that expanded officials\u2019 powers to classify information<\/a> as secret or top secret. Congress thwarted that attempt<\/a> by rejecting the decree.<\/p>\n

Although extending deadlines to respond to information requests may be reasonable during an emergency, given the president\u2019s recent actions and record, this presidential order could effectively deprive the right of access to information of all meaning, Human Rights Watch said.<\/p>\n

The order was to be applicable until at least December 31, 2020, but on March 26, a Supreme Court justice issued a preliminary injunction<\/a>, pending a decision by the full court.<\/p>\n

In his ruling, the justice asserted that the order \u201cattempts to transform exceptions \u2013 information kept secret \u2013 into the rule, impeding the full implementation of the principles of publicity and transparency.\u201d Congress, which needs to review the presidential order, should revoke it, Human Rights Watch said.<\/p>\n

Despite the potentially life-threatening risk to Brazilians\u2019 health, since the beginning of the crisis, Bolsonaro has minimized the gravity of COVID-19, comparing it to a \u201clittle flu\u201d or a \u201ccold,\u201d<\/a> calling it a \u201cfantasy<\/a>\u201d promoted by the media<\/a>. He has labeled preventive measures \u201chysterical<\/a>\u201d and repeatedly called on state governors to lift social distancing orders put into effect to prevent the spread of the disease.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe risk group are people over 60 so why close schools,\u201d he said on a televised speech on March 24<\/a>. \u201cEach family has to protect its elderly people<\/a>, not to throw that responsibility to the state,\u201d he said on April 8. \u201cSome people are going to die,\u201d he told reporters on March 27, and added: \u201cI\u2019m sorry; that\u2019s life<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

President Bolsonaro has disregarded social distancing recommendations himself and encouraged people who are not \u201colder\u201d to do the same, putting them at risk of contagion.<\/p>\n

He called on people to participate in a pro-government rally<\/a> on March 15 and plunged into a crowd shaking hands. At the time, he was supposed to be in quarantine, since twenty-four<\/a> people who had traveled to the United States with him had tested positive for the virus.<\/p>\n

In a prime-time television address on March 24<\/a>, he called on Brazilians<\/a> to \u201cgo back to normal.\u201d At least 25 of Brazil\u2019s 27 state governors decided to maintain restrictions<\/a> to prevent the spread of COVID-19 even after Bolsonaro called for an end to quarantines.<\/p>\n

On March 28, a federal judge ordered<\/a> the federal government not to carry out a publicity campaign under the hashtag in Portuguese \u201c#Brazilcannotstop\u201d that would have urged Brazilians to flout social distancing recommendations.<\/p>\n

The president\u2019s communication office had already published<\/a> two social media postings with that slogan. The president\u2019s son, Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, had distributed a video with the federal government logo that was supposedly part of the campaign.<\/p>\n

The judge ruled<\/a> that the campaign contradicted Health Ministry recommendations.<\/p>\n

President Bolsonaro posted a video<\/a> on April 1 that said there were shortages of food and other essential products in the city of Contagem because of the Minas Gerais state government\u2019s measures. His own agriculture minister later said<\/a> the information was false<\/a>. Bolsonaro has also said the authorities in S\u00e3o Paulo, the state that has suffered the most deaths so far, were falsely overstating the number of dead<\/a>, without providing any evidence.<\/p>\n

Go to Original – human-wrongs-watch.net<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

10 Apr 2020 \u2013 President Jair Bolsonaro is putting Brazilians in grave danger by urging them not to comply with social distancing and other measures to slow the spread of COVID-19 from state governments and his own Health Ministry, Human Rights Watch said today. He has also acted recklessly by disseminating misleading information about the pandemic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":125527,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[180],"tags":[1176,547,239,120,1829,1868,267,487,541,109,287,880],"class_list":["post-158169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-brics","tag-bolsonaro","tag-brazil","tag-brics","tag-conflict","tag-coronavirus","tag-covid-19","tag-geopolitics","tag-human-rights","tag-latin-america-caribbean","tag-politics","tag-power","tag-state-terrorism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=158169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158169\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=158169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=158169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=158169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}