Court Bars Appointment of Palmares Foundation President

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Judge Emanuel José Matias Guerra, of the 18th Federal Court of Ceará, accepted the Class Action proposed against Jair Bolsonaro’s government’s decision to appoint Sérgio Camargo president of the Palmares Foundation. In a nine-page decision signed on Wednesday, the magistrate suspends the act of the Presidential Chief of Staff, Onyx Lorenzoni, who appointed Camargo to the post.

In grounding his decision, Judge Guerra argues that the careful analysis of the publications collected by the plaintiff of the class action, Helio de Sousa Costa, “points to the occurrence of excesses” in statements by the head of the Palmares Foundation. “Some of the terms used in the statements in a direct attack on minorities will not be repeated here, whose defense, it should be said, is the reason for the institution that he presides”, says the judge.

However, the judge notes, for “illustrative purposes”, statements by Sérgio Camargo. “He refers to Angela Davis as ‘communist and scary old trout’, in which he says she has nothing to do with ‘Africa, its customs and religion’; one which suggests a medal for ‘a white man who jails a militant black man for the crime of racism’; one that says that ‘Marielle [Franco] must die. Only then will she stop being a pain in the but’; and that he believes that ‘if you are African and you think Brazil is racist, you can walk right out that door.'”

According to the magistrate, these examples show that the new president of the Palmares Foundation has published statements “that have the power to insult the very audience that should be protected by the body that he presides”.

“From all that has been said above, it is clear that the appointment of Sérgio Nascimento de Camargo to the position of President of the Palmares Foundation blatantly contravenes the determining reasons for the establishment of that institution and jeopardizes it, since it is possible to deduce that the new Presidency, faced with the mindset he exhibited on social media, may act in a perpetual conflicting trajectory with the constitutional principles of equity, the appreciating of the blacks and the protection of Afro-Brazilian culture,” writes the magistrate.

“In view of all the above, I concur, in a court of summary judgement, specific to its nature, the arguments brought by the plaintiff, which is why I hereby suspend the validity of Act 2.377, of November 27th, 2019, drafted by the Presidential Chief of Staff, rendering ineffective the nomination of Sérgio Nascimento de Camargo as the President of the Palmares Cultural Foundation,” notes the decision.

Source: Carta Capital

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