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The president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, said on Tuesday during his speech at the General Assembly of the United Nations Organization, in New York, that "it is a fallacy to say that the Amazon is a world heritage site" and the region does not represent "the lungs of the Earth".

Bolsonaro has also denied that the Amazon "is being devastated by fire" and has accused some countries of behaving "in a colonialist manner" with respect to Brazil. "Instead of helping us, some countries behave in a disrespectful and colonial way by attacking our sovereignty," said the president, not to mention particular countries.

A score of protesters in green T-shirts, with a giant doll of the Brazilian president and a sign with the legend "Bolsonaro, a threat to the Earth" has congregated in front of the UN for protests during his speech. "The Earth is burning, the Amazon is burning, Bolsonaro is a liar!" the protesters shouted.

The president of Brazil, a skeptic about climate change that defends commercial exploitation in areas of environmental and indigenous preservation, tries to convince the world that the situation in the Amazon is under control. But deforestation doubled in the first half of the year, and the fires - mostly caused by farmers and loggers - almost tripled in August compared to the previous year, causing an international crisis.

French President Emmanuel Macron even proposed granting the Amazon an "international status", an idea that outraged Bolsonaro, who accused him of wanting to restrict Brazil's sovereignty. That was "an absurd proposal," Bolsonaro said Tuesday at the UN.

According to official figures, the deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon practically doubled between January and August, and this year represents the equivalent of 640,000 soccer fields.

Attack on Cuba and Venezuela

The president has begun his intervention with a strong attack on Cuba and Venezuela , countries he has referred to as "dictatorships" that must be defeated.

For a UN tradition that reserves the first speech of the General Assembly to Brazil, it has opened the phase of debates and, in its first words, has affirmed that it presents a "new country", which in the recent past " to be on the edge of socialism. " That, according to the leader of the extreme right, led Brazil "to a situation of widespread corruption" and also led to "uninterrupted attacks on religious values" backed by the Sao Paulo Forum, an organization that brings together parties on the left of Latin America.

He has also alluded to around 10,000 Cuban doctors who, until the end of last year, operated in Brazil through cooperation plans signed by previous governments and that Havana decided to withdraw after criticism of Bolsonaro to its authorities.

The Brazilian ruler has assured that, with the withdrawal of these Cuban professionals, Brazil "stopped contributing to the Cuban dictatorship , " to which he assured that previous governments sent "300 million dollars annually" through these cooperation programs.

Bolsonaro recalled that "in the 60s, Cuban agents were sent throughout Latin America" ​​to promote "socialism" and were "defeated" in a "war that we also won" in Brazil. And he has affirmed that today some "60,000 Cubans" are in Venezuela and act in the areas of "intelligence and defense" to keep in power a "dictatorship" that has implanted in that country that "before was so prosperous", the "barbarism of socialism".

Bolsonaro has highlighted Brazil's effort to welcome the thousands of Venezuelans who have come to the country in search of a new life and said that his Government will continue "working for democracy to be restored in Venezuela" and for "other countries of the region do not experience that dire regime of socialism. "

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