Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s veto will take effect after publication in the official gazette, and will be analyzed by Congress, which could still reverse it, setting up another Supreme Court challenge. File
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Brazil’s President announced on Friday that he will partially veto a bill restricting Indigenous groups’ claims to ancestral lands, overriding Congress’s recent approval of the legislation.

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will veto a core stipulation of the bill which would have only recognised Indigenous peoples’ right to claim territories they occupied or were legally disputing in October 1988, when the constitution was ratified, Minister of Institutional Relations Alexandre Padilha announced.

The land rights legislation, backed by the powerful agribusiness sector, is seen by some critics as an effort to counteract Mr. Lula’s efforts to bolster environmental and Indigenous land protections, after his campaign pledge to demarcate new tribal territories.

Mr. Padilha said that the president’s veto would be partial and not total as Indigenous movements had requested, with the rest of the bill signed into law.

“Everything that attacked the rights of Indigenous peoples, and which contradicted the constitution, and the recent decisions of the court, were vetoed,” Mr. Padilha said.

The bill drew backlash with its 1988 “time-frame argument”, or Marco Temporal thesis, which was pushed by the country’s powerful farm lobby. Indigenous groups filed a lawsuit arguing that many people had been forced from their ancestral lands, including during the military dictatorship that ruled Brazil from the 1960s to 1980s.

The Supreme Court sided with the Indigenous activists and climate campaigners last month.

But days later, Congress approved the legislation, in conflict with the court’s ruling.

The president’s veto will take effect after publication in the official gazette, and will be analyzed by Congress, which could still reverse it, setting up another Supreme Court challenge.

Sonia Guajajara, Brazil’s first Indigenous Affairs Minister, who was appointed by Mr. Lula, called the President’s move “a great victory”.

“Vetoing the time frame reaffirms the Supreme Court’s decision, guaranteeing the government’s coherence with the Indigenous, environmental and international agenda,” she said.

Many environmentalists consider the establishment of state-protected Indigenous reserves one of the best ways to fight deforestation and, with it, climate change.

According to data from Funai, a government entity that defends Indigenous populations, the reserves occupy 13.75 percent of the country’s territory.

Indigenous people make up 1.7 million of Brazil’s 203 million inhabitants.

New Delhi:

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said that he was very touched emotionally when he went to pay homage to Mahatma Gandhi at Rajghat in Delhi. He noted that Mahatma Gandhi had a great meaning in his political life.

In his remarks at the closing session of the G20 Presidency, the Brazilian President said, “And I would like to say, Prime Minister Modi that I personally am very much touched emotionally when I went to pay a homage to our dear Gandhi. Everybody knows that in my political life, Mahatma Gandhi has great meaning because the struggle for non-violence with role model that I followed for many decades when I was in the labour movement. And that’s why I am very much touched and emotional. And I like to thank you for the opportunity to pay this homage that we did today.

“And I like to say to all of you that Brazil will take the chair of the G20 and we will make a tremendous endeavour to manage to at least try to do something as the same that our brothers and sisters from India did,” he added. 

Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva made the statement as he and all other world leaders paid homage to Mahatma Gandhi at Rajghat on Sunday morning. 

Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Sunday thanked India and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s efforts in conducting the G20 Summit and set forth three priorities under his country’s presidency of the grouping. These, the Brazil President said include social inclusion and the fight against hunger, energy transition, sustainable development and reform of global governance institutions.

At the closing session of the G20 Summit in New Delhi, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said, “All these priorities are part of the Brazilian presidency motto which says ‘Building a fair world and a sustainable planet’. Two task forces will be created – Global Alliance against Hunger and Poverty and the Global Mobilisation against Climate Change.”

“…The technical groups and the preparatory ministerial meetings will be hosted in several cities in all five regions of our country…I will be very much honoured to welcome you all to Rio de Janeiro Summit in November of 2024 and before I ham the hammer here, I would like to thank very much to PM Modi and to thank the Indian people for the competence that they had in organising this event…,” he said. 

He made the remarks after PM Modi handed over the ceremonial gavel of the Group of 20 Presidency to him. The Brazilian President said that the world needs to redouble its efforts to achieve the goal of ending world hunger by 2030.

“We need to redouble our efforts to achieve the goal of ending world hunger by 2030. Otherwise, we will be facing the biggest multilateral failure in recent years, Acting to fight climate change requires political will and determination of the rulers as well as resources and technology transfer. We want greater participation of the emerging economies in the decision-making process of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, the unbearable foreign debts of the poor countries needs to be addressed,” he added.

The Brazilian President said that people today are living in a world where wealth is more concentrated in which millions of human beings still go hungry and where sustainable development is always threatened.

“…We are living in a world where wealth is more concentrated in which millions of human beings still go hungry, where sustainable development is always threatened, in which government institutions still reflect the reality of middle of the last century. We will only be able to face all these problems if we address the issue of inequality – inequality of income, of access to healthcare, education, food, gender and race and also of representation is at the origin of these anomalies,” Lula da Silva said.

He congratulated Prime Minister Narendra Modi for an “efficient leading” of India’s G20 Presidency and praised him for the work carried out in preparing the G20 Summit. Lula also expressed gratitude to India for its efforts of giving voice of the topics of interest to emerging economies.

“I thank India for its efforts for giving voice of the topics of interest to emerging economies. I would also like to give my salute to our friend, the representative of the African Union, who is a member of the G20,” the Brazilian President said.

Earlier, PM Modi handed over the ceremonial gavel of the G20 Presidency to Brazil’s President at the G20 summit here.

“I congratulate Brazilian President and my friend Lula da Silva and hand over the gavel of Presidency,” PM Modi said minutes before the G20 Summit in Delhi concluded.

Earlier, Indonesian President Joko Widodo and Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva handed over saplings to Prime Minister Narendra Modi ahead of Session 3 of the G20 Summit.

While Indonesia held the G20 presidency last year, Brazil will hold the presidency after India and hold the G20 Summit in its capital Rio de Janeiro. India took over the G20 presidency on December 1 last year at the G20 Summit in Indonesia’s Bali and will continue to hold it till the end of November.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

New Delhi:

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said on Saturday that Russian leader Vladimir Putin would not be arrested in Brazil if he attends the Group of 20 meeting in Rio de Janeiro next year.

Interviewed on the sidelines of the G20 meeting in Delhi by news show Firstpost, Lula said Putin would be invited to next year’s event, adding that he himself planned to attend a BRICS bloc of developing nations meeting due in Russia before the Rio meeting.

“I believe that Putin can go easily to Brazil,” Lula said. “What I can say to you is that if I’m president of Brazil, and he comes to Brazil, there’s no way he will be arrested.”

The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant against Putin in March, accusing him of the war crime of illegally deporting hundreds of children from Ukraine. Russia has denied its forces have engaged in war crimes, or forcibly taken Ukrainian children.

Putin has repeatedly skipped international gatherings, and was not present at the G20 get-together in Delhi, sending Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

Brazil is a signatory to the Rome Statute which led to the founding of the ICC. Lula’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

On Saturday, the G20 nations adopted a consensus declaration that avoided condemning Russia for the war in Ukraine but called on all states not to use force to grab territory.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)