TURTLE BAY, New York City, September 25, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) — Brazil’s president slammed socialism as a death-dealing ideology and defended his country’s sovereignty over the Amazon rainforest in a hard-hitting address at the United Nations on Monday.
Jair Messias Bolsonaro, elected in October 2018 and inaugurated January 1, 2019, also exhorted the U.N. not to overstep its mandate and pointed to the Gospel as a guiding light.
“We are not here to erase nationalities and overrule sovereignty in the name of an abstract ‘global interest,’” Bolsonaro said during general debate at the 74th U.N. general assembly.
“This is not the Global Interest Organization! This is the United Nations organization. And so it must remain,” he said.
“When it comes to matters related to climate, democracy, human rights, to the equality of rights and duties between men and women and many others, all we need to do is contemplate the truth, following John 8:32,” Bolsonaro said. “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”
Socialism an ideology that destroys families, culture
Bolsonaro told the assembly he represents a new Brazil, one prepared to take on international responsibilities, and gave a stinging critique of socialism.
“Over the past few decades, we let ourselves be seduced by ideologies that sought not truth, but absolute power” and “settled in the domains of culture, education, and communications, dominating the media, universities, and schools,” Bolsonaro said.
“Ideology has invaded our homes and tried to dismantle what is the celula mater of any healthy society: the family,” he said.
“It has also tried to destroy the innocence of our children in an attempt to corrupt even their most basic and elementary identity: the biological one.”
“Ideology has invaded the human soul to rip it apart from God and from the dignity He bestowed on us,” Bolsonaro said. “And with these methods, ideology has always left a trail of death, ignorance, and misery wherever it went.”
“I am living proof of this,” the president added. “I was cowardly knife-stabbed by a leftist militant and only survived by a miracle. Once again, I thank God for my life.”
Bolsonaro’s address is part of a “growing chorus of opposition to the anti-life and anti-family agenda typically promoted at the U.N.,” said Matthew Wojciechowski, vice president of Canada’s Campaign Life Coalition, which has official NGO status at the U.N. and has been lobbying there in defense of life and family for more than 20 years.
“We applaud President Bolsonaro for defending the family unit as the foundation of our society and for identifying the problem: a radical ideology that has invaded his country and much of the Western world,” said Wojciechowski, who oversees Campaign Life’s U.N. lobbying.
“We are thankful that he has reiterated his commitment to protect innocent children from these ideologies which reject our human nature and attempt to separate children from their parents,” he told LifeSiteNews.
“The words of President Bolsonaro are greatly needed.”
Media’s false reports led to attack on Brazil’s sovereignty
Bolsonaro also defended Brazil’s jurisdiction over the Amazon rainforest and said the media maligned his country during recent fires in the territory, which were the result of seasonal dry weather and indigenous people’s use of fire “as part of their culture and means of survival.”
The Amazon, a region larger than Western Europe, “is not being destroyed or consumed by fire, as the media is falsely portraying,” he said.
The “sensationalist attacks” from the media “have aroused our patriotic sentiment,” Bolsonaro told the assembly.
“It is a fallacy to say that the Amazon is the heritage of humankind, and a misconception, as confirmed by scientists, to say that our Amazonian forests are the lungs of the world,” he said.
“Using these fallacies, certain countries, instead of helping, embarked on the media lies and behaved in a disrespectful manner and with a colonialist spirit,” he said.
“They even called into question that which we hold as the most sacred value: our own sovereignty.”
Bolsonaro said it was suggested at the last G7 meeting that Brazil be sanctioned for allegedly not taking care of the rainforest, which his country has preserved “virtually untouched.”
He was grateful to those who did not support “this absurd proposal,” particularly President Donald Trump, who “well epitomized the spirit that must prevail among U.N. member-states: respect for the freedom and sovereignty of each of us.”
Foreign states exploiting Brazil’s indigenous
He also accused foreign governments and interest groups of “manipulating” Brazil’s indigenous people as a ploy to “advance their interests in the Amazon.”
“Unfortunately, some people both inside and outside Brazil, supported by NGOs, have stubbornly insisted on treating and keeping our Indians as if they are real cavemen,” Bolsonaro said.
Brazil’s native peoples are “human beings” who “want and deserve to enjoy the same rights as all of us,” he said, and “do not want to be poor, large landholders sitting on rich lands…especially sitting on the world’s richest lands.”
There are 225 indigenous tribes in Brazil, and some reserves, notably the Ianomami and Raposa Derra do Sol, have “plenty of gold, diamond, uranium, niobium, and rare earths, among others,” and are huge territories populated by few people.
“This shows that those who attack us are not concerned with the indigenous human being, but with the mineral wealth and biodiversity in these areas,” he said.
The president read an open letter from the Indigenous Farmers Group of Brazil endorsing U.N. delegate Ysani Kalapalo to speak on their behalf. “Radical environmentalism and outdated indigenous studies” that represent “backwardness” and “marginalization” are not what Brazil’s native people want, the letter said.
Brazil has demarcated 14 percent of its territory as indigenous land and will not increase that to 20 percent as “some heads of state would like,” Bolsonaro told the U.N. assembly. Only eight percent of Brazil’s lands are used in food production, and 61 percent of its landmass is preserved, he said.
Brazil emerging from socialism’s effects
His country is also committed to combat growing worldwide religious persecution, as manifested in “cowardly attacks that victimized the faithful in churches, synagogues, and mosques,” and he supported the creation of an international day to commemorate the victims of such acts.
He detailed Brazil’s efforts to clean up corruption and crime that are the consequence of recent socialist presidents who “embezzled hundreds of billions of dollars, corrupting part of our media and our Parliament, all for a project to attain absolute power.”
Bolsonaro said that within its first six months, his government cut murder rates by more than 20 percent, and the “seizure of cocaine and other drugs has reached a record high.”
Read Bolsonaro’s prepared text here.