A 16-page letter sent by ten UN special rapporteurs and the organization’s mechanisms dispels the myth that Brazil welcomes foreigners. The document, delivered to the government of Jair Bolsonaro in April 2022, condemned a range of human rights violations against migrants and refugees, primarily Africans, Haitians and Venezuelans.
The document was signed by rapporteurs such as Tendayi Achiume, Dominique Day, Balakrishnan Rajagopal, Cecilia Jimenez-Damary, Felipe González Morales, Olivier De Schutter and others.
When contacted, Itamaraty did not clarify whether the UN letter was the target of the official Brazilian state response, as requested by the rapporteurs. The document demands clarifications and concrete measures to combat the phenomenon from the Brazilian government.
According to UN rapporteurs, the information it received “raises concerns that discriminatory policies and practices against migrants, refugees and asylum seekers violate the government’s domestic and international law obligations.”
“We are concerned by reports that systemic racial discrimination and racist violence against immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers have intensified in recent years and that this decline has been accelerated by the public and private sector response to the COVID-19 pandemic,” he said.
Rapporteurs still say they are “deeply concerned” about structural discrimination against this population. The same expression of deep concern is still being expressed at reports of mass deportations, arbitrary deportations, displacement and discrimination against immigrants.
The rapporteurs acknowledge that under Brazilian law, recognized immigrants and refugees have equal rights to the legal protection and services available to Brazilian citizens.
xenophobia against Africans
One of the issues that most concern rapporteurs is xenophobia against African immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers.
“Brazil has more than 50,000 migrants, refugees and asylum seekers from Africa, including citizens of Angola, Guinea-Bissau, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Senegal,” the letter states.
However, according to them, African asylum seekers face difficulties when they arrive in Brazil. “After disembarking, some are imprisoned at Brazilian airports indefinitely, even if they have all the necessary documents and other requirements to stay in the country. After incarceration, some asylum seekers are sent back to their country of origin without individual assessment. They risk being rejected by employees,” he denounces.
“Moreover, some African and Haitian immigrants in Brazil have been victims of physical and symbolic violence in the country. In the last 20 years there have been numerous manifestations of racism and xenophobia, including the killing and arbitrary detention of Africans and Haitians, the university supporting African immigrants “public expressions of racist and xenophobic sentiment, including the burning of their homes and hate speech and graffiti against the presence of African immigrants in Brazilian cities.”
closed borders
Another highlighted issue was the closure of borders in the face of covid-19. In their view, government-issued regulations did not provide provisions to prevent a refugee from being returned to their country of origin.
“Furthermore, the restrictions are reported to have a disproportionate impact on certain individuals by nationality, including those from Venezuela,” he said.
“The government argues that the Venezuelan border closure is for public health reasons. However, entry restrictions for people from Venezuela have been made disproportionately stricter. As a result, Venezuelan immigrants have resorted to unsafe roads, the use of jackals (smugglers) and other intermediaries. increases the risk of exposure to various forms of violence, such as rape, extortion, forced recruitment and exploitation.
As a result, the number of undocumented immigrants who are extremely vulnerable has increased. According to them, even though the Brazilian government acknowledged that there was a humanitarian crisis and serious and widespread human rights violations in Venezuela, regulations issued by the government prevented the entry of Venezuelans.
“There have been reports of mass deportations of migrants at the Brazilian border. In one case, in August 2020, more than a dozen migrants of different nationalities, although mostly Venezuelans, were immediately deported at the Peruvian border near Assisi, Brazil. In the Brazilian state of Acre,” he said. emphasizes.
“They were deported through denial of their right of defense or due process of law. This group was transferred to a bridge between Peru and Brazil. They were left in an extremely vulnerable situation at the border, without permission to enter either country,” he complains.
evacuations
The letter also condemned evictions from immigrant communities. One of them took place in April 2020, when more than 100 Venezuelan migrants were forcibly evicted without a court order off the coast of Rio Branco.
“The police used a backhoe to demolish the makeshift shelter. The government justified this destruction and displacement on the basis of the need to prevent gathering during the pandemic and the land being an environmentally protected area. No plans were made to provide an alternative or alternative. Children and high-risk Covid-19 “Temporary shelter, even for families that belong to groups of -19,” he said.
Some of these migrants established another settlement in the forest, where they lived “in dire health conditions, including lack of access to water and sanitation and fear of further police intervention.”
Social impact and lack of documentation
The letter also condemns the difficulty for migrants to access education, housing, emergency social support and other social rights. “The main barrier is that immigrants, including refugees and asylum seekers, are often required to present documents to access these services, and government documents are increasingly inaccessible due to their immigrant status,” he says.
“The lack of emergency support has led to other alleged systematic violations of immigrants’ human rights during the pandemic, including an increase in arbitrary evictions, malnutrition, relocation to poor quality housing and an increase in the number of homeless people.”
According to rapporteurs, discrimination against refugees, asylum seekers and immigrants has been deepened by Brazil’s economic, political and public health response during the pandemic.
“This has been exacerbated by the lack of coordination between government agencies tasked with monitoring immigration issues and the growing militarization of immigration law enforcement,” they accuse.
The group also highlights widespread acts of discrimination by private actors. “In northern Brazil, particularly in the states of Roraima and Amazonas, there have been large-scale manifestations of xenophobia perpetuated by members of the local community. This includes physical violence including insults, intimidation, threats, public hate speech, murder in shelter. and pregnant migrant women such foreign They may be more vulnerable to hostility and violence,” they warn.
For them, the xenophobic environment means that migrants and refugees do not feel safe seeking support from hospitals, schools and other public institutions.
In some places, actions against this population still take on a racist component.
“Brazil’s southern region has experienced racism and xenophobia due to popular hostility towards Haitians, Senegalese and other black immigrants,” the letter said.
The complaint points out that many migrant women engage in sex work for survival and that there are significant human trafficking networks in Brazil.
source: Noticias
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