UN human rights official: ‘I feel sorry for Brazil’ under Bolsonaro

The United Nations’ human rights chief reportedly said in a new interview that she “feel[s] sorry for Brazil” under far-right President Jair Bolsanaro.

“I was asked in a press conference about the situation in Brazil and we gave the information that we have, which is the number of people who have been killed and the difficulty for civil society to continue doing the things they were doing before,” Michelle Bachelet told Chilean national television, according to Reuters.

{mosads}“How I take things depends on who is saying them… So if someone is saying that their country has never been under dictatorship, that there has never been any torture there… well then let him say that the death of my father by torture ensured that Chile did not become Cuba. The truth is that I feel sorry for Brazil,” she added.

After Bachelet, a former president of Chile and current U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, criticized a spike in police killings and human rights violations of indigenous people under Bolsonaro, he accused her of “meddling” in Brazilian affairs, according to the news service.

Bolsonaro also said Bachelet was biased because her father, an air force general, died in jail after he continued to support socialist president Salvador Allende after a 1973 CIA-backed military coup.

“[Bachelet] forgets that the only reason [her] country isn’t like Cuba is thanks to those who had the courage to put a stop to the left in 1973,” Bolsonaro wrote, according to Reuters. “Among those communists was her … father.”

The military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, which deposed Allende, killed or disappeared at least 3,000 people.