Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro attends the flag-raising ceremony at his official residence in Brasilia, Brazil, July 22, 2020. (Photo by Lucio Tavora/Xinhua)

A Brazilian indigenous organization asked the International Criminal Court (ICC) Monday to investigate Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro for "genocide" and "ecocide," accusing him of persecuting native peoples and destroying their homelands.

The Association of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB) alleged in a case filed with The Hague-based court that the president has led "an explicit, systematic and intentional anti-indigenous policy" since taking office in 2019.

"We believe there are acts in progress in Brazil that constitute crimes against humanity, genocide and ecocide. Given the inability of the justice system in Brazil to investigate, prosecute and judge these [crimes], we denounce them to the international community," the group's legal coordinator, Eloy Terena, said.

Bolsonaro, 66, has presided over a surge of destruction in the Amazon rainforest, slashed environmental protection programs and pushed to open indigenous reservations and other protected lands to agribusiness and mining.

Indigenous activists also accuse him of exacerbating the devastation that COVID-19 has wrought on their communities with his anti-stay-at-home policies.

Brazil's estimated 900,000 indigenous inhabitants are particularly vulnerable to outside diseases, including COVID-19, which has killed at least 1,166 of them, according to APIB.

It is not the first time indigenous leaders have accused Bolsonaro of attacking their people and homelands.

In January, iconic indigenous chief Raoni Metuktire filed a separate case to the ICC asking the court to investigate Bolsonaro for crimes against humanity, saying the "destruction of the Amazonian forest has accelerated without measure" under his government.

The ICC's chief prosecutor must now decide whether to pursue the cases.

Official figures released Friday show deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon reached near-record levels for the year through July.

According to satellite data from the Brazilian space agency's DETER monitoring program, it was the second-worst year on record for the world's biggest rainforest, behind only Bolsonaro's first in office.

AFP