Families of Covid victims bring criminal charges against Bolsonaro

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The Association of Covid-19 Victims and Relatives of Victims (AVICO) this month lodged a criminal complaint with the Prosecutor General’s Office (PGR) demanding that President Jair Bolsonaro be held accountable for his handling of the pandemic.

The group calls for Bolsonaro to be denounced to the Federal Supreme Court (STF) for the crimes of prevarication, violation of preventive health measures, irregular use of public funds, danger to life or health, and destruction of rescue material.

“President Bolsonaro has made decisions deliberately endangering and causing the death of Brazilians by Covid-19,” the association argues.

In the document, they draw attention to the promotion of crowds, the encouragement of early treatment, and the Ministry of Health’s ‘authoritarian’ management, with the change of the portfolio’s Ministers in the midst of the health crisis.

“When he did not exonerate, Bolsonaro caused the dismissal of Health Ministers at critical and timely times for the proper handling of the crisis. Such dismissals have always had an obvious goal: that the management of the pandemic would be conducted exactly in the terms advocated by the president, that is, with no respect for isolation and/or social distancing measures and with an appeal to ineffective treatment” reads an excerpt of the complaint.

AVICO also criticizes the inefficiency of mass vaccination against the coronavirus and the doubts cast by the president about vaccines. According to the association, Bolsonaro adopted an ‘anti-vaccine stance’ and failed to buy doses to immunize the population.

The management of the pandemic by the federal government is classified by the association as a ‘genocidal institutional strategy.’

“The stance of president Jair Messias Bolsonaro towards the pandemic evidences a cruel and bloody federal strategy to spread Covid-19, executing an unprecedented attack on human rights in Brazil,” the document reads.