“Bacteriological warfare”: alert in Brazil for a Bolsonaro explosion against China

BRASILIA.- Faithful heir to Donald Trump, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has gone further in his criticism of China for the coronavirus. Bolsonaro hinted Wednesday that the Chinese had started a “bacteriological war”, an epidemic that can cost the country dearly when it needs vaccines and other Covid-19-related supplies the most, especially in China.

“It’s a new virus, no one knows if it was born in a lab or if it was born because a human ingested an inappropriate animal. But it’s there “the far-right leader said at an official ceremony in Brasilia.

“The army knows that this is chemical, bacteriological and radiological warfare. Are we not facing a new war? Which country has recorded the fastest growth in GDP? I’m not going to tell you, ”he added.

Bolsonaro did not explicitly mention China, but the Asian country, where the pandemic started at the end of 2019 and then spread to the world, is the only member of the G-20 to have recorded economic growth in 2020 (+2, 3%).

The president’s statement is similar to that made a few days ago by the Minister of the Economy, Paulo Guedes, when he pointed out that China was the country that had “invented” the Covid-19, a statement that he had to deny it a few hours later due to the Chinese government’s anger.

And one of his sons, Congressman Eduardo Bolsonaro, accused China in March last year of “hiding” information about the virus. The lawmaker compared the attitude of the Chinese government to “the Soviet dictatorship”, which tried to hide the scale of the explosion of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 1986.

China, Brazil’s largest trading partner and major investor in this country, was quick to respond. “The Chinese side vehemently repudiates his remarks and demands that he withdraw them immediately and apologize to the Chinese people,” tweeted Chinese Ambassador to Brasilia Yang Wanming.

Brazil is having difficulty importing doses of vaccine from China and the main inputs to manufacture them. These diplomatic tensions and the delay in acquiring vaccines are on the agenda of a Brazilian parliamentary commission which is seeking to determine whether the government has been negligent in handling the pandemic.

Members of the parliamentary committee expressed concern that the advances against China could hinder the arrival of new Chinese vaccines in the country.

Lawmakers have hinted that Bolsonaro’s statements could upend the Asian giant and hurt the import of the raw material needed to manufacture the vaccine developed by Chinese laboratory Sinovac, the most widely used in the campaign to date, into the country. Brazilian vaccination against Covid.

“I think our situation of dependence on (Chinese) contributions will worsen with this statement,” said the chairman of the committee, Senator Omar Aziz.

“He calls it chemical warfare. And we are in the hands of the Chinese to import the active ingredient of the vaccine. We do not produce this active ingredient in the country and we will not produce it as quickly. We depend on India for some inputs and China for others. Now is not the time to bother anyone, ”he added.

AFP and ANSA agencies

THE NATION