Lula da Silva has positions that “are not compatible with human rights”

The person in charge of Brazil of the organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) considered this Wednesday that, in the field of foreign policy, the Brazilian president, Lula da Silva, has given signals that “are not consistent with the values ​​of human rights”. .

In an interview with Lusa in Lisbon, Maria Laura Canineu gave examples of statements by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva about Venezuela and its position in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.

On the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the Brazilian president “He gave very complicated signs and manifestations,” said María Laura, who added that these positions are not based “in reality”, when equating the responsibilities between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

“Then he made a trip to Europe again” and “shaped the statement a little more, I think even here in Portugal,” he explained.

According to Laura Canineu, HRW’s position in this case is “very similar to other cases in the world, and it is that there can be no peace without justice.”

The official affirmed that the president of Brazil says that he “likes to work in multilateral mechanisms” and stressed that there are “a series of multilateral initiatives to determine responsibilities for the conflict in the UN and there is an investigation commission” underway.

Therefore, if the Brazilian president “you want to build peace, negotiate peace, you must first start supporting these UN initiatives to find out who is responsible for what is happening in the conflict”, he concluded.

For the person in charge of the international non-governmental organization (NGO) for Brazil, “Lula, in these first months, gave some contradictory signals and many were not consistent with the values ​​of human rights.”

He pointed to the recent visit of the president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, to Brazil, within the framework of the Latin American summit, as one more event in which the Brazilian president took condemnatory positions.

“Lula described the accusations that Venezuela does not live a democracy as a constructed narrative,” said the activist, who noted that HRW itself documented “very serious violations in Venezuela, a long time ago, very strong threats to democracy, an executive who dominated the judiciary. , dominated the legislature to suppress access to justice and access to the fundamental rights of the Venezuelan population.”

That’s why, Lula da Silva’s position “is absurd.”

“It is a sign that it was not positive and that it shows that Lula may not be prepared to assume this commitment to have a consistent position on human rights and independent of the ideological bias of the government,” he concluded.

For this reason, he hopes that through “a mobilization of the international community and the movements of victims, HRW can change that”, he stressed, guaranteeing: “we will do our part for this, signaling what is happening in these places, giving this Narrative of an international organization that knows what is happening in Venezuela, in China”, a country where the Brazilian President made his second official visit.

“There was no demonstration on the need for the pillar of democracy, access to justice for victims, very serious violations that the UN itself has identified as potential crimes against humanity and against an ethnic minority”in China, during the visit of the Brazilian president, he said.

“To be a leader, you need to take strong positions of [defesa dos] human rights and that does not mean losing economic positions, economic relations, alliances. He has to be a courageous leader” from an international point of view, he added.

In Brazil, the threats to democracy occurred simultaneously with the impoverishment of the Brazilian population and “that, in itself, added to the mismanagement of the pandemic, resulted in more poverty, more children out of school, more health problems.”

“There was a very serious deterioration in the basic conditions of survival of the Brazilian population,” he considered.

With the government of Lula da Silva, who took office last January, the head of HRW acknowledges that “the openness to dialogue has completely changed”, with all the requests for meetings from the NGO to the government to attend to.

But, he warned, there are still “serious violations of human rights in Brazil”.

Therefore, HRW “will continue to insist that the government really implement a program to protect human rights defenders, that is effective.”

In the area of ​​public security, the organization will continue to call for “a plan or several policies that lead to the reduction of lethality,” because this is one of the “most serious and sensitive human rights problems in Brazil.”

The latest data in Brazil on deaths due to police intervention is from 2021, the year in which there were “6,000 deaths in the country and 84% of these deaths are of black people.”

“There is a very great need to talk about racism in the application of the law in Brazil,” he said.

In his opinion, this state violence exists “because there is also a lot of impunity.”

The political discourse “has completely changed”, he acknowledged, but even so, he speaks of the need for “courage” by the Brazilian Executive to face this problem, as well as that of violence against women.

Finally, the head of the human rights NGO said that her organization will also closely follow the “very important” appointment, in September, of the Attorney General of the Republic.

The current one, António Augusto Aras, was appointed by Lula da Silva’s predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, and was “off the list of the Public Ministry itself” and was a person who “silenced human rights.”

The organization hopes that there can “really be a sign consistent with the principles, human rights and impartiality that this charge warrants” in the fight against environmental crimes and corruption.

Maria Laura Canineu is in Lisbon “to hold talks” to see how the European Union and Portugal can “help the new Government [do Brasil] to fulfill its promises in human rights and in the fight against the climate crisis, which is the most important thing facing the world”.