Brazil: missionaries 'turning tribes against coronavirus vaccine'

[Judi Lynn]

Health workers were reportedly attacked with bows and arrows after visiting an indigenous community in Amazonas

Reuters in Brasília
Thu 11 Feb 2021 15.48 EST

Medical teams working to immunise Brazil’s remote indigenous villages against the coronavirus have encountered fierce resistance in some communities where evangelical missionaries are stoking fears of the vaccine, say tribal leaders and advocates.

On the São Francisco reservation in the state of Amazonas, Jamamadi villagers sent health workers packing with bows and arrows when they visited by helicopter this month, said Claudemir da Silva, an Apurinã leader representing indigenous communities on the Purus river, a tributary of the Amazon.

“It’s not happening in all villages, just in those that have missionaries or evangelical chapels where pastors are convincing the people not to receive the vaccine, that they will turn into an alligator and other crazy ideas,” he said by phone.

That has added to fears that Covid-19 could roar through Brazil’s more than 800,000 indigenous people, whose communal living and often precarious healthcare make them a priority in the national immunisation program.

Tribal leaders blame Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, and some of his avid supporters in the evangelical community for stoking scepticism about coronavirus vaccines, despite a national death toll that lags behind only the United States.

More:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/11/brazil-missionaries-turning-tribes-against-coronavirus-vaccine

[scarletwoman]

1. Fuck a bunch of missionaries! They ought to be outlawed.

Words cannot adequately describe the sheer unmitigated loathing I feel for them.