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News > Brazil

Brazil: Bolsonaro Now Blames Governors for Fires at the Amazon

  • A tract of Amazon jungle burns in Novo Airao, Amazonas state, Brazil August 21, 2019.

    A tract of Amazon jungle burns in Novo Airao, Amazonas state, Brazil August 21, 2019. | Photo: Reuters

Published 22 August 2019
Opinion

Far-right President Bolsonaro's indolence brings about outraged reactions worldwide. Celebrities have joined their voices in defense of the Amazon.

Not satisfied with blaming environmental charities for expanding deforestation in the Amazon, Brazil's far-right President Jair Bolsonaro now holds that governors are "accomplices", for they do not resolve the situation.

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Bolsonaro's Arson Accusations Are 'Smoke Screen': NGOs

"Look, there is a governor, I don't want to say his name, who is colluding with what is happening and blames it on the Federal government," Bolsonaro said on Wednesday and added that "in the northern region, there are states, which I don't want to mention, where the governor is not even moving a shovel to help fight fire. He is enjoying it."

While the president of the largest Latin American economy keeps on inventing guilty parties without offering any proof, the disaster is generating dramatic images which will surely become symbols of the struggle for the Amazon.

One of them was captured by Araquem Alcantara, a photographer who photographed a small anteater trying to escape the fire, a tragedy like those experienced by polar bears which are living symbols of the effects of global warming.

What is currently happening at the Brazilian rainforests, however, is generating more and more outraged reactions worldwide.

“Fire has been destroying for days what nature built across centuries... Deforestation at the Amazon has to stop!! For our health and the health of our Planet!!”, Gisele Bundchen, the Brazilian supermodel, wrote on Instagram and asked her followers to sign a Greenpeace petition.

"Terrifying to think that the Amazon is the largest rain forest on the planet, creating 20 percent of the earth's oxygen, basically the lungs of the world, has been on fire and burning for the last 16 days running, with literally NO media coverage whatsoever! Why?," Leonardo di Caprio, the U.S. actor, wrote as a caption of a picture of the fire.

"The media, which are often quick enough to cover political controversies and negative stories, say nothing about this urgent matter," Alessandra Ambrosio, another Brazilian supermodel claimed and invited people to use social networks to report what happens because "the world will see what is really going on.”

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