Under government pressure, Brazilian Congress passes weakened bill against Indian infanticide
Bill created to eliminate failure to report infanticide now shuts its eyes to it
By Julio Severo
Under pressure from the administration of President of Brazil Dilma Rousseff, the Brazilian House of Representatives has critically debilitated a bill establishing criminal accountability from health agents and agents of Funai (Brazilian acronym for National Indian Foundation, which supposedly should protect Indians) considered “neglectful” in cases of infanticide in tribes.
The custom of burying children alive, or to abandon them to die in forests, persists until today in several Brazilian tribes. Babies are chosen to die for several reasons, from being born with a physical handicap to being twin or single mother’s son. The main reason for those murders is the sorcerer’s decision. Being a spiritual leader over Indians, his decisions of life or death are obeyed in the highest degree.
The freedom that the State grants Indian spiritual leaders is a freedom that the State would never allow among Christian spiritual leaders. No Catholic priest or evangelical minister has protection under the law to decide the death of members of their churches. But in the Indian spiritual leader’s case, that “authority” is inviolable.
Funai refuses to comment on its reasons to prevent their agents and health agents from being held criminally accountable. The original bill draft, which protected Indian children, had the official support from evangelical and Catholic congressmen.
In the backstage, Funai, which is a state agency directly subordinate to the Brazilian government, worked, with CNBB (Brazilian Catholic Bishops’ Conference), to weaken the bill original draft with the argument that it would create an improper interference and it would reinforce “prejudice” against Indians.
The government logic is crazy: it wants to intervene brazenly in the freedom of Christians, under the excuse that murders of homosexuals in areas of drugs and prostitution are caused by the “prejudice” from Christians. And it wants no intervention against Indian sorcerers, who directly order babies’ murders, to protect Indians from “prejudice.” That is the logic of Nero, which protects murderers and blame Christians for murders that they have never committed.
Health agents have the state function of “visiting” Brazilians from house to house and registering, supposedly for health objectives, how many people live in a house, what they do, etc. If there are children, monitoring is much deeper, leading to intrusive inquiries about education and “health”, including an inspection to verify if children received all the vaccines. They don’t have any freedom to be “neglectful” when, in their prying task and surveillance, they meet Christian families that don’t vaccinate their children or that homeschool them. In those circumstances, they are forced to report the “criminal” families.
But, as far as Indian tribes are concerned, the State failure in monitoring has become standard, especially over children whose lives are under threat. In that case, health agents and Funai agents are free to be “neglectful” and to pretend that they didn’t see anything when they witnessed an Indian sorcerer’s insane decision condemning Indian babies to death.
Portuguese version of this article: Sob pressão da Funai, Congresso Nacional aprova lei aguada contra infanticídio indígena
German version of this article: Auf Druck der Regierung verwässert der brasilianische Nationalkongress den Gesetzesentwurf gegen indianischen Kindesmord
Source: Julio Severo in English:
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