Brazil: from the ISL we join the Solidarity Campaign with the people of Amazonas #SOSAmazonas

By Alternativa Socialista – ISL, Brasil.

From the International Socialist League, we want to send our solidarity to the comrades who in the state of Amazonas have been defending life against the governments that chose to protect the profits. We join the Urgent Campaign for Amazonas and cry with you: SOS Amazonas!

While the world is seeing the decrease of the infection rates, Brazil is reaching record numbers of deaths and infections. An average of 1423 daily deaths during the last week, shortages of vaccines, overcrowded hospitals, exhausted healthcare workers and a growing social crisis are the postcard of a suffering country. Bolsonaro and the minister of health, Pazuello, continue to ignore health recommendations and maintain their infamous denialism to ensure the profits of a very few.

In the state of Amazonas and its capital Manaus, the federal policies hit harder as they merge with the critical social and economic situation of a state historically devastated by the agro-business, exctractivism and an industry that generates precarious jobs with low salaries.

The governor of Amazonas, Wilson Lima (Social Christian Party -PSC) has been doing the opposite of the recommendations and warnings that different health experts, health, social, union and political organizations have been making. As the comrades from Amazonas say, he consciously decided to count deaths rather than to save lives. That is why the situation is desperate to the point of going through shortages of oxygen for hospitals because they did not properly arranged the order, or the lack of painkillers to prevent the suffering of those who have to be intubated.

We join the cry SOS Amazonas and demand that a state of emergency be declared, with all the necessary funds to respond to this critical situation, in defense of a true Single and Universal Healthcare System with enough funding to provide quality health care for the people. We also demand the release of patents for vaccines to esnure state production covering the entire population and a basic emergency income for all working class people who have precarious or informal jobs. And for all this, we are part of those who say Out with Bolsonaro and Mourão, let the workers, the women workers and the poor people govern!

To join the campaign, send us your picture with the sign #SOSAmazonas to our Facebook and Instagram accounts: @alternativasocialistapsol, and share them on your social media to spread the campaign.

Here is the invitation of the campaign:

Urgent Campagin for Amazonas:

SOS-Amazonas!

Comrades, in the face of the worsening of the healthcare and social crisis caused by the pandemic of Covid-19, we called for the development of a solidarity campaign with the people of Amazonas and the raising of our voices so that the federal, state and municipal governments take urgent measures to face the pandemic and protect LIVES.

Our brothers and sisters are at the epicenter of this pandemic and suffer the worst crisis of this rotten system that chooses profits over lives. Today all of Brazil suffers the sad mark of 250 thousand dead by direct and indirect responsibility of Bolsonaro’s government and his trupe of military servants of the capital like the (dis)Minister of Health Pazuello who consciously chose to COUNT THE DEAD INSTEAD OF SAVING LIVES. But in the Amazon the situation is terribly more serious and is spreading to the rest of the country.

Lack of beds, medicines, oxygen and now they tie people to the beds so that they do not move due to lack of sedatives. It happens that when performing the procedure and even while the person is intubated, it is necessary to be sedated, because everything is very uncomfortable and painful.

Governor Wilson Lima is directly and indirectly responsible for the dramatic situation, since he rejected each and every one of the recommendations that experts on the matter had been insistently warning about. This is how he proceeded during the 1st wave when he decreed the return to school activities, and this is how he continues in the 2nd wave, allowing the normal functioning of the State, as if nothing happened and people did not die. We note that in less than 2 months of 2021 more people have died in Amazonas than during the whole year 2020.

The situation in the state of Amazonas is, therefore, an emergency and there is no time to lose. It is urgent to spread this cry of SOS-Amazonas! May the workers in their workplaces, in the unions, in the neighborhoods, in the social and political organizations and the leftist parliamentarians make their public statements and any solidarity action that arises. We must flood social media with #SOSA-Amazonas and photos with posters with the same slogan.