RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – On Thursday, April 29th, President Jair Bolsonaro said that Europeans are “prejudiced” against the Brazilian indigenous people and, therefore, don’t buy what they produce.
Alongside the president of the National Indigenous Foundation (FUNAI), Marcelo Xavier, the president also said that Brazil is the “most harassed country in the world” when it comes to environmental issues.
“You see Europe so worried about the indigenous, about the Amazon, about deforestation, about fire outbreaks,” Bolsonaro said during a live stream on social networks April 29. “Many people in big cities say that the indigenous people must be addressed and preserved the way they came into this world. It’s not quite like that, folks. And look at the European’s discrimination: they don’t buy what they (indigenous) produce because they don’t want to see them progress,” he said.
In his weekly live stream on Thursday, Bolsonaro was joined by the president of FUNAI and two indigenous ethnic representatives, who called for support for the liberation of trade of their production with foreign buyers, as well as the possibility of planting transgenic crops.
In the discussion, Bolsonaro again said that there is an “economic game” behind other countries’ criticism of Brazil’s environmental policy.