The Minister of Human Rights and Citizenship, Macaé Evaristo, said, on Monday night (26), that the Charter of Human Rights Principles was “rifted” by groups that hold power in certain countries. According to the minister, concepts such as democracy are being used to impose the authority of the strongest over the weakest. 
“We are at a moment in the history of the world in which that agreement on our charter of human rights principles was, I will use the word popular, raffled off by groups that currently hold hegemony in power in certain countries,” he said.
“They think we are going to forget everything we have agreed and agreed upon up until now, the need to respect sovereignty, the self-determination of peoples, and they are going to impose the law of the strongest”, he added.
The minister gave the statements at Casa do Povo, in the Bom Retiro neighborhood, in the capital of São Paulo. The cultural center was built by the Jewish community after the Second World War and opened in 1953 in memory of the victims of Nazism. The place was also a place of resistance against the military dictatorship.
During the afternoon, Macaé Evaristo visited Jewish community institutions based in Bom Retiro, such as the Holocaust Memorial and Ten Yad charity, and took a walk through the region, marked by a series of human rights violations.
“This territory is marked by so much violence, eviction of people from Favela do Moinho, eviction from Teatro de Container, eviction of vulnerable populations, attacks on homeless people”, highlighted the director of Casa do Povo, Benjamin Seroussi.
“It is our Jewish history that brings us to the present moment. We cannot discuss anti-Semitism without discussing other forms of oppression that are even more acute, unfortunately, in the territory where we live,” he added.
