The government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has been rocked by a sensitive and potentially damaging scandal involving two of his most popular ministers. The human rights minister, Silvio Almeida, 48, has been accused by several women of sexual harassment, Me Too Brasil, an NGO that defends victims of sexual violence, revealed late Thursday in a note. There are four complaints of sexual harassment, according to the news portal G1. One of the complainants is, according to the digital media, Metropolisa colleague in the Cabinet, Anielle Franco, 40, who heads Racial Equality. For the moment, she is silent and he declares himself innocent and the victim of persecution. But President Lula made it clear this Friday in an interview that the accused’s time in the Cabinet is numbered and that he has the right to defend himself. “I think his continuity in the Government is not possible,” he said in an interview. The scandal is also an atomic bomb in the heart of the Brazilian black movement.
The president has not dismissed Minister Almeida, but he has made a blunt statement: “What I can tell you is that someone who harasses will not stay in the Government.” Lula was speaking in an interview with several media in Goiania, where he is on an official visit. The president has promised that the Federal Police will investigate the complaints. In addition to the four for sexual harassment, there are six more for workplace harassment, according to G1. Lula added that “it will be necessary to investigate properly, but I think that his continuity in the Government is not possible because, with someone who is being accused of harassment, there is a need to investigate the case, and the police will not be able to continue working in the Government.” [sexual]the Government would not be up to its rhetoric, in its defence of women, including human rights.”
The fact that the complaint is for sexual harassment is compounded by the profile of the accused and the alleged complainant. In addition to sitting together in the Cabinet, both Franco and Almedia entered politics with Lula to lead two ministries closely connected to activism in favour of human rights, women’s rights, black rights, against racism and xenophobia… Both are black and come from civil society. She is the sister of the murdered Carica councillor Marielle Franco. He is a philosopher, university professor and author of an essential work entitled Structural racismHe is considered one of the great black thinkers of today.
As soon as the scandal broke, Minister Almeida released a video in which he defended himself against the accusations. “I vehemently repudiate the lies that are being said against me (…) any accusation must have evidence. And what I see are absurd conclusions with the sole intention of harming me, [de] “They want to erase our struggles and our stories,” he says in the recording. On Thursday evening, the government announced that the head of Human Rights had appeared before the Attorney General of the Union and the Comptroller General to give explanations “on the complaints published in the press.”
Since confirmed information on the case is extremely scarce, Brazil has become a hotbed of unofficial information. Commentators analyze every word, every gesture and every silence. Without saying a word, the first lady and political adviser to Lula gave the impression of speaking out on the matter before dawn on Friday. Janja da Silva posted a photo on Instagram in which she appears hugging Minister Franco and kissing her forehead. The image was immediately interpreted as a show of strong support from the president’s wife, who in recent years has influenced him to give more space in his political discourse to feminism and the evils generated by machismo.
In its public complaint, Me Too Brasil points to another delicate aspect of the case: that the victims authorized the NGO to take the case to the press due to the lack of support from institutions. “As often happens in cases of sexual violence involving aggressors in positions of power, these victims faced difficulties in obtaining institutional support to validate their complaints,” says its note.
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