00:00On March 27th, the Trump administration announced that it's considering declaring Brazil's two largest drug trafficking groups,
00:08the Comando Vermelho and the PCC, as international terrorist organizations.
00:13According to the New York Times, this has come in response to a demand from the family of jailed far
00:18-right President Jair Bolsonaro,
00:20who has strong ties to the international far-right.
00:24The official position of the Brazilian government is opposed, obviously, to the idea of foreign governments classifying organized crime groups
00:33as terrorist organizations.
00:36It's important to be clear about this.
00:39From a legal perspective, Brazil can allow this.
00:43We also can approve of it from a political perspective because we can put national sovereignty at risk,
00:50or in the hands of foreign governments, países, estrangeiros.
00:56In a nation where military police death squads have killed thousands of innocent civilians in the past 40 years during
01:03incursions into favelas,
01:05human rights activists are worried about how U.S. military involvement could further endanger the rights of the vast majority
01:12of favela residents
01:13who do not belong to organized crime groups.
01:17Favelas already suffer from a lot of discrimination.
01:20There are negative stereotypes of how people live in favelas.
01:25People are criminalized simply because they live in favelas.
01:32So imagine what will happen to the people who live in favelas if crime groups that operate there are classified
01:37as terrorist groups.
01:43Others point out the hypocrisy of the U.S. government.
01:46While President Trump recently pardoned ex-Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez,
01:51a real-life convicted drug trafficker serving a 45-year sentence in the U.S.,
01:56he used evidence-free accusations of drug trafficking against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro
02:01as an excuse to order the kidnapping of him and First Lady Celia Flores during an operation that left 100
02:08people dead.
02:12Remembering that Trump is a representative of the U.S. imperialism,
02:17what wants to do by labeling the Comando Vermejo and the PCC as terrorist organization
02:24is to prepare the ground for a future military intervention in Brazil
02:29so that we'll violate our international sovereignty.
02:33Soberania Nacional
02:35As missiles fly over the Middle East,
02:38the United States' old and ugly history of violating national sovereignty across Latin America continues.
02:45Brian Meir, Telesur, Recife.
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