The Permanent Court of the Peoples will try President Jair Bolsonaro for crimes against humanity, attacks against minorities and threats to democracy committed during the covid-19 pandemic.
The international body created in the 1970s does not have the weight of the International Criminal Court and does not have the capacity to bring cases against a state or head of government. But an eventual conviction is seen by civil society groups, former ministers and lawyers as an important seal to pressure Planalto Palace and expose Bolsonaro to the world.
The Permanent People’s Court (TPP) will consider the Brazilian case from the cities of Rome and São Paulo on May 24 and 25. Officially, the session is called “Pandemic and Authoritarianism – Responsibility of the Bolsonaro government for the systematic violation of the basic rights of the population in Brazil during Covid-19”.
The complaint against Bolsonaro will be submitted by the Commission for the Defense of Human Rights Dom Paulo Evaristo Arns, Public Services International, Articulation of Brazilian Indigenous Peoples and the Black Coalition for Rights.
The groups will accuse Bolsonaro of “using his powers to deliberately spread the Covid-19 epidemic in Brazil, causing the preventable death and illness of thousands of people in the perspective of an authoritarian escalation that seeks to suppress rights and democracy, especially for indigenous peoples, the black population and healthcare workers.” It erodes, highlighting vulnerabilities and inequalities in access to public services and the assurance of human rights”.
The prosecution will be led by lawyers Eloísa Machado de Almeida, Sheila de Carvalho and Maurício Terena. The Brazilian government has been notified of the trial and it is up to the authorities to determine a defense. “If the Brazilian government does not attend the hearing, the court will appoint an ad hoc rapporteur,” the parties explain.
Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro, former minister for Human Rights in the government of Fernando Henrique Cardoso and member of the Arns Commission, believes the trial itself “signifies the seriousness of the situation”.
The complaint will mainly focus on demonstrating that there is a practice of inciting genocide against indigenous peoples and the black movement.
“We are in a situation as serious as it was during the military dictatorship (1964-1985),” Pinheiro said. “Actually, those who are in power today are the legacy of those who want to make Minister Silvio Frota President. Ideologically, it is a hard line. It is the enemy of civil society, intellectuals and the press.”
According to him, the work will accuse Bolsonaro of systematic human rights violations, in addition to giving a voice to victims such as the black population, indigenous people and public health professionals.
“Although it is an opinion decision, a sentence is the expression of an opinion endorsed by a number of key experts. This will add to other initiatives in the UN and the Inter-American system. It will help bring about this dire situation. Democracy lives in Brazil,” said Pinheiro.
In his assessment, what caused the court to accept the indictment was “a situation where the coup is announced every day”. “These Brazilian people who are exposed to vaccine denial in this coup are being violated,” he said.
parts of a larger process
Laura Greenhalgh, also from the Arns Commission, emphasizes that the action in the Court must be understood in the context of a wider non-governmental organization in order to bring crimes committed by the current government to international bodies.
According to him, in addition to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, efforts are being made in the UN Human Rights Council. In the current incriminating paper, the information points from the liberation of fields for mining to an attempt to distribute chloroquine and violent operations to communities with the tacit authorization of the authorities. “Everything that happened had a method,” he said.
what is a court
Headquartered in Rome, Italy and defined as an international court of opinion, the TPP is dedicated to determining where, when and how the fundamental rights of peoples and individuals have been violated. In its references, it establishes processes that examine the causal links of violations and denounces the perpetrators of crimes internationally.
Although it is a court of conviction whose sentences are not necessarily enforced by official state justice systems, the TPP’s decisions are relevant. They indicate recognition of crimes and duties of reparation and justice that would otherwise not be taken into account by official legal systems.
Another function is to support criminal proceedings, by serving as support for the drafting of laws and international treaties to prevent recidivism.
An example of its relevance cites the session in Argentina in the 1980s, when the first list of political casualties under the military regime in the country was presented.
The pioneering tribunal, established in November 1966 and held in two sessions in Sweden and Denmark, was organized by the British philosopher Bertand Russell, with the mediation of the French writer and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and with the participation of Italian intellectuals. politician Lelio Basso, writer Simone de Beauvoir, American activist Ralph Shoenman and Argentine writer Julio Cortázar. The court then investigated the crimes committed in the US military intervention in Vietnam.
In the following years, similar courts were established under the same model, and human rights violations in the dictatorships of Argentina and Brazil (Rome, 1973), the military coup in Chile (Rome, 1974-1976), human rights in psychiatry (Berlin, 2001) and Iraq (Brussels). , 2004), the wars in eastern Ukraine (Venice, 2014) in Palestine (Barcelona, 2009-2012).
This is not the first case the court will consider Brazil in the democratic era.
In 1989 he held a hearing dedicated to impunity for crimes against humanity in Latin America. He stressed at that moment that those responsible for the violations committed during the Brazilian military dictatorship were not punished and that the right to collective memory was denied as a condition of avoiding new forms of authoritarianism.
The situation of children and adolescents in Brazilian society and the prison problem in the country were topics discussed in 1991. The session at Amazon the following year showed the tragic distance between truth in government and the rights defended by the 1988 Convention. autonomy guarantees for the region and local peoples.
And last year, at its 49th Session, the court received complaints of environmental destruction and violations of the rights of Brazilian cerrado peoples. However, the penalty has not yet been announced.
TPP’s historic number 50 session will also mark the centennial of the birth of Lord Bertrand Russell (1872-2022), philosopher, human rights advocate, Nobel Prize laureate and founder of the Russell Tribunal, which investigates crime. The Vietnam War and its atrocities in the 1960s gave birth to the TPP.
Today the court is presided over by Italian Luigi Ferrajoli and counts with names such as Alejandro Macchia, Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Jean Ziegler, Rubens Ricupero, and Joziléia Kaingang, the Brazilian anthropologist of the Kaingang ethnic group. Brazilian Articulation of Anthropological Indigenous Peoples (Abia) and National Expression of Indigenous Women’s Ancestral Warriors (Anmiga).
Author Nicoletta Dentico, former director of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in Italy, is a member of the UK Parliament in the House of Lords in addition to Baroness Vivien Stern.
source: Noticias
