Silvio Almeida: President Lula dismisses the Minister of Human Rights after being accused of sexual harassment | EUROtoday

The authorities of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has been shaken by a fragile scandal with monumental potential for harm that the president is attempting to nip within the bud. Lula dismissed the Minister of Human Rights, Silvio Almeida, 48, on Friday night time, after a number of girls denounced him for sexual harassment to the NGO Me Too Brasil, which defends victims of sexual violence and revealed the case 24 hours earlier. One of these complainants is, in keeping with varied media, Anielle Franco, 40, Minister of Racial Equality. He declares himself harmless and a sufferer of persecution. Hours after Lula stated in an interview “I think that his continuity [del ministro Almeida] “In the Government it’s not attainable,” the president met him in Brasilia to ask him to resign. Faced with his refusal, he dismissed him, a decision made official by the Presidency in a note in which it only announced the interim replacement. The scandal is also an atomic bomb in the heart of the Brazilian black movement.

Minister Franco has broken her silence following Almeida's departure from the government: “It shouldn’t be acceptable to relativize or diminish episodes of violence (…) Attempts guilty, disqualify, disgrace or stress victims to talk (…) solely gas the cycle of violence,” she says in a note posted on Instagram. After praising “the forceful motion of President Lula,” she added that she will collaborate with the investigations.

The president has promised that the Federal Police will investigate the allegations. In addition to the four for sexual harassment, there are six more for moral harassment, according to G1. Lula said, in the morning in Goiania, that “it will likely be essential to analyze correctly, however I imagine that his continuity within the Government shouldn’t be attainable as a result of, with somebody who’s being accused of harassment, [sexual]the Government wouldn’t be as much as its rhetoric, in defence of ladies, together with human rights.” Back in Brasilia, Lula met with Almeida to resolve the matter.

The fact that the complaint is for sexual harassment is compounded by the profile of the accused and the alleged complainant. They are probably the two most popular ministers among Brazilian progressives. In addition to sitting together in the cabinet, both Franco and Almedia entered politics with Lula to lead two portfolios closely linked 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 Rio 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, the now dismissed 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.”

The original complaints, made to an NGO, are anonymous and the details are not known. But this Friday a woman, identified as Isabel Rodrigues, published a devastating testimony on Instagram for the suspect. Professor Rodrigues said that, after becoming friends with Almeida and sharing some coffees, in 2019, during a lunch with other people with whom they had had a work meeting, he put his hand under her skirt and touched her private parts. She says that, embarrassed, she did not say anything. “It took me a while to understand that I had been a victim,” she explains before adding: “When someone invades our body, we have to speak out.”

Since confirmed information on the case is extremely scarce, Brazil has become a hotbed of unofficial information. Commentators analyse 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.