French Lawyers Deem Bolsonaro’s Actions in the Amazon Crimes Against Humanity
RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Lawyer Jessica Finelle and François Zimeray, also lawyer and the former French ambassador in charge of human rights, report that environmental issues are being taken increasingly more seriously by the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Besides, the Hague-based institution in the Netherlands has already warned that environmental offenders may be prosecuted on the same footing as war criminals.
“Indifferent to these warnings, the new Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, intends to leave the Paris agreements and evict indigenous populations from their lands in the Amazon to develop economic activities”, point out the activists. “If implemented, some of their projects could be regarded as crimes against humanity, mainly due to the forced relocation of indigenous people,” the text continues.
The lawyers also alert to multinational corporations’ liability for potentially contributing to these actions in the Amazon. “The direct or indirect involvement of companies in the financing, technical conception or execution of these presidential goals could be viewed as complicity in human rights violations,” they point out.
The lawyers cautioned that this was not “legal fiction”, and recalled that the ICC had already been confronted with a similar situation in 2014.
At the time, Cambodians lodged a criminal complaint of crimes against humanity after the eviction of almost one million people in over a decade, as a result of contracts signed between the Cambodian government and foreign companies.
The ICC’s ruling is still pending, they admit, but it may corroborate their view that environmental crime cases against humanity have become a priority issue.
More: Brazil news in English, every day from The Rio Times.
This article was produced by The Rio Times’ automated AI newsroom. Editorial responsibility: Matthias Camenzind, Publisher and Editor-in-Chief. The Rio Times also runs Ask Rio Times, which answers from 100,000+ of our own articles, the daily Latin America Power Map, and prediction-market odds on elections and markets.. How we use AI · Report an error
Brazil runoff, Sunday, October 25: When is the Brazil runoff election. Latest: Brazil runoff polls, Flávio 51%, Lula 49%.