??????????
The Brazilian Amazon is on fire. This doesn’t just affect Brazil but the entire planet.
The Amazon:
* Creates 20% of the planet’s oxygen.
* Houses 40% of the planet’s tropical forest.
* Holds 20% of the world’s fresh water supply.
* Is home to Indigenous communities who know how to tend and protect the land sustainably.
??????????
The fires ravaging the Amazon are not an act of nature alone. Fires are started deliberately by land grabbers and industrialists — miners, loggers and ranchers. More than 72,000 fires have been detected between January and August and more than 9,500 forest fires since Thursday.
Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro is vehemently anti-environment. He’s said that the only people who care about the environment are “those who eat plants, the vegans” and that “the Amazon is ours” when criticised by international bodies for his environmental protection rollbacks.
Amazon deforestation has increased 88% since Bolsonaro took office. It hasn’t even been one year.
His racist vitriol toward the Indigenous population and comments suggesting he will open up the Amazon to industry has incentivised illegal land grabbers, miners, loggers and farmers to invade Indigenous land, terrifying and killing Indigenous people, including the recent murder of Wajãpi leader Emyra Wajãpi.
Bolsonaro intends to break from the Paris Agreement, expelling Indigenous people from Amazonian lands so he can develop industry. If Indigenous people are executed or die because of forced transfer, Bolsonaro’s projects could be considered crimes against humanity to be tried at the International Criminal Court.
When confronted by the media about the current fires, he claims NGOs started the fires to “draw attention to his person”, or make him look bad.
This is Bolsonaro’s Brazil.
??????????
Join Extinction Rebellion Bondi Beach, Extinction Rebellion Sydney / NSW and supporters outside the Brazilian Consulate to let Brazil know that Bolsonaro CAN’T MASSACRE THE AMAZON and that the whole world is watching.
??????????
??? PLEASE BRING PLACARDS AND COLOUR, HEART AND SOUL ???
This is an act of deep human concern and love.
Bolsonaro must TELL THE TRUTH about the climate emergency, his actions and inaction relating to the rainforest and the Indigenous communities who tend to and protect the land sustainably.
Bolsonaro must ACT NOW to protect the Amazon and its Indigenous communities.
This is BEYOND POLITICS. While we are passionately critical of Bolsonaro we have no affiliation with any political party.
THIS IS A NONVIOLENT, NONPARTISAN ACTION.
????????
THURSDAY 29 AUGUST
8:30am (Consulate opens at 9)
Consulate General of Brazil
(downstairs out the front of the lobby entrance)
45 Clarence Street
Sydney
?????????
*********
We organise and act on Gadigal land which was never ceded.
**********
