AMERICA/BRAZIL - 2017 "Annus horribilis" for the Amazon. The denunciation of Cardinal Hummes and Bishop Erwin Krautler

Thursday, 4 January 2018 environment   amazon   human rights   indigenous   bishops  

POM Brasile

Brasilia (Agenzia Fides) – The Amazon has been transformed into a land without law or without the rule of law, at the mercy of the arrogance of those who have money and power, and where the political, judiciary and law enforcement powers are like ghosts.
This was reported by Brazilian Cardinal Claudio Hummes - President of the Red Eclesial Pan Amazónica (REPAM) - and by Bishop Erwin Krautler - president of REPAM-Brasil - in a public letter published on the occasion of the Christmas season, entitled "¡Tanta violencia en la Amazonia, pero la Vida, Don de Dios, es más fuerte!". The document recalls the Christmas event that breaks through the signs of death and oppression that hurt the Amazon, which has become "currency of exchange in the political plots of public representatives immersed in the mud of corruption", and who pays a high price are "the Amazonian populations who resist the destruction of our common home".

The letter focuses on the murders, the cases of deportation and looting of houses and lands that have ravaged the lives of the Amazonian population in the last year. "2017" recalls the document "closes with an unprecedented toll of deaths: peasants, men, women and children. Conflicts have intensified and have reached all corners of the Amazon". The information reported in the letter shows "an unforgivable negligence on behalf of the State, which in those conflicts did not sufficiently defend the victims and, in some cases, assumed the role of aggressor". What is also underlined is "the lack of investigation and impunity for most of the crimes committed in the Amazon".

The letter concludes by recalling "the prophetic faith of many witnesses of the Amazon", who recognize and confess "the incarnation of God among the poor. The birth of Jesus in a stable outside the city" underline Cardinal Hummes and the Bishop Kräutler "is already a silent option of God for the poor and the excluded, those whom the world consider superfluous as disposable objects". The poor, in their condition of exclusion from the 'banquet of life', become God’s favourite". (CE) (Agenzia Fides, 04/01/2018)


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