Donald Trump, look away now. A congressional panel in Brazil has called for President Jair Bolsonaro to be charged with “crimes against humanity” for letting COVID-19 rip through his country in a failed bid to achieve herd immunity. According to The New York Times, the panel’s report calls for further criminal charges against 69 other people, including senior officials and three of Bolsonaro’s sons. At least 604,000 Brazilians have died from the coronavirus, a death toll that ranks second only to that in the United States. The panel says Bolsonaro is responsible for more than half of those deaths for encouraging mass gatherings, opposing masks and vaccines, and pushing unproven “cures” like hydroxychloroquine. (Sound familiar?)
It could have been worse for Bolsonaro, however. An earlier version of the report recommended that the populist president—known as “Trumpinho”—be charged with “mass homicide and genocide” after the virus swept through Indigenous populations in the Amazon region, but the panel backed off just before publication of its 1,200-page report. “It is at best uncertain whether the report from the 11-member panel—seven of them opponents of Mr. Bolsonaro—will lead to any actual criminal charges, given the political realities of the country,” the Times reported.
Read it at The New York Times
