Brazil Senators Call for Bolsonaro to Indisting crimes against humanity for handling the pandemic

A Brazilian Senate committee has approved a report recommending accusing Jair Bolsonaro of serious crimes such as “crimes against humanity” for his handling of the pandemic, and called for suspending the president’s access to his social media accounts for citing false information about COVID.
Seven of the 11 senators who investigated the government’s management endorsed the text presented by Senator Renan Calheiros last week, which also called for indicting 77 other people, including several ministers and former ministers, three of the president’s sons and two companies.
After six months of tense sessions in a small Senate room in Brasilia analyzing the actions and omissions of the government, the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry (CPI) approved the report that recommends accusing the president of a dozen crimes, including “crimes against humanity, favoring an epidemic that resulted in death and “charlatanism.”

At the end of the vote, the senators held a minute of silence in tribute to the more than 606,000 deaths from COVID in Brazil.

O maior mérito dessa CPI foi existir, funcionar e iluminar as catacombs da inoperância, da má-fé, da desonestidade e da morte.
O caos do governo Jair Bolsonaro will enter for a história como o mais baixo degrau da indigência humana e civilizatória. Essa CPI foi histórica.
— Renan Calheiros (@renancalheiros) October 27, 2021

From the beginning of the health emergency, Bolsonaro minimized the pandemic, defended ineffective drugs, such as hydroxychloroquine, and raised doubts about the efficacy of vaccines.
At first, the senators delved into the responsibilities for the serious shortage of oxygen that caused the death of dozens of patients by asphyxiation in Manaos, but then they delved into irregularities such as the “deliberate delay of the government to buy vaccines” or the existence of a “parallel cabinet” of doctors that advised the president.
They also raised suspicions of corruption in the purchase – not made – of the Indian vaccine Covaxin, which earned Bolsonaro the opening of a judicial investigation for “prevarication” by not having denounced the case.
And they investigated connections between the government and private health operators. There jumped the scandal of Prevent Senior, an operator for the elderly accused of using patients as “human guinea pigs” to test ineffective drugs without their consent and to make up the death toll from coronavirus.
It is a “political report, without legal basis (…) The biggest scandal is a purchase of vaccines that was not made,” reacted Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, one of the president’s sons, also accused in the report.
A “serial killer”
The responsibility for the pandemic “is many people, there are many accused, but it is mainly the president, that ‘serial killer’, who has an obsession with death,” Calheiros said.
The ICC does not have the power to make formal complaints. But the report, with dozens of moving testimonies, will be sent to different bodies that can bring charges, such as the attorney general’s office or an international court.
Although it could bring serious political and judicial consequences, analysts agree that its short-term impact will be “symbolic”, because Bolsonaro still has enough support in Congress to avoid an ‘impeachment’ and see it unlikely that the attorney general will resolve to indict him.
The popularity of the president, who assures that he is “not to blame for anything”, is at its lowest level since he assumed the presidency in 2019, due to the pandemic but also to the economic crisis, and the polls for 2022 show him behind the former leftist president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Fake News
The ICC senators also asked the Supreme Federal Court (STF) and the attorney general’s office to suspend Bolsonaro’s access to his Facebook, Instagram, Youtube and Twitter accounts until further order, after he mentioned false information about the coronavirus in a live connection last Thursday.
Specifically, Bolsonaro, a great adept at social networks where he has more than 40 million followers, cited a false news story about alleged official reports from the British government that “suggest” that the fully vaccinated are developing the AIDS disease “much faster than expected.”
The video was later removed from Facebook, Instagram and Youtube. The video platform also decided to suspend Bolsonaro’s channel for a week.
The spread of fake news is another crime attributed to the president in the report.
In August, the Supreme Court decided to investigate him for crimes of “slander” and “incitement to crime” for related reasons.With their questions without evidence of the electronic voting system in Brazil, among others.
Political scientist Mauricio Santoro sees Tuesday’s request as unlikely to succeed.
“I’m skeptical. If we rely on the case (of Donald) Trump, we would have to see something very serious, such as the invasion of the Capitol, for something like this to happen,” Santoro told AFP, referring to the decision of Twitter and Facebook to exclude the former US president from their networks after those riots.
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Original source in Spanish

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