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Three NGOs warn at the UN about the growing risk for isolated Indians in Brazil

2020-02-27T18:48:13.604Z


The report that the organizations will present to the UN Human Rights Commission on March 3 details the dismantling of the environmental and indigenist policy


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They are the most vulnerable among the vulnerable. Three Brazilian NGOs have allied themselves to alert the United Nations about the serious risk posed by the dismantling of Brazil's environmental policy for isolated Indians, who have no permanent contact with society. These organizations warn that the increase in deforestation and invasions by illegal miners and loggers has been much more pronounced in the lands where their presence has been confirmed or where it is suspected that these tiny communities especially sensitive to diseases and the disappearance of Flora and fauna

The Socio-Environmental Institute, the Arns Commission and Conectas Human Rights have prepared a report that "details the process of dismantling of environmental and indigenist policies by this Government" which, headed by Jair Bolsonaro, took office almost 14 months ago. Already since the election campaign the retired military announced his intention to allow the economic exploitation of indigenous lands - the bill is in Congress - and weaken the environmental policy. Indigenous leader David Kopenawa Yanomami will be in charge of presenting the study, to which this newspaper has had access, before the UN human rights commission on March 3 in Geneva (Switzerland).

Brazil is the country with the most isolated Indians. The presence of 28 communities is confirmed and the existence of another 86 is under study, according to the ISA report, the Arns and Conectas Commission, which mentions official figures.

One of the measures that best embodies the turn driven by Bolsonaro is the appointment of an evangelical missionary to lead the body dedicated to the protection of isolated and newly contacted indigenous people. The diseases of the whites and the evangelizers are two of the great threats to these groups since the landing of the Jesuits with the Portuguese conquest. Ricardo Lopes Dias worked for many years with an American organization called Missão Novas Tribes, a cult focused on indigenous people and aggressive tactics. According to the Survival NGO, they proclaim that they intend to reach the last tribe because only then will Christ return.

This kind of SOS who want to launch at the UN sits on the alarming balance sheets of last year. “More than 21,000 hectares were destroyed only in 2019 on lands with isolated Indians, which represents an increase of 113%. It is a much higher increase than the average values ​​in the Amazon and protected areas (by law) in general, indicating the increase in illegalities and invasions and the seriousness of the problem, ”says the detailed study.

The NGOs point to four cases of imminent danger: the constant presence of missionaries in the Jabari Valley, the indigenous land with more isolated villages, together with the murder of a former employee of the National Indian Foundation (Funai) and the shooting of one of its bases; in the Yanomami land the threat is the 20,000 garimpeiros (illegal miners) that have degraded 300,000 hectares and that, with their mercury, pollute the rivers; the 60 isolated indigenous awa, recently filmed, live in a reserve where illegal loggers have already built more than a thousand kilometers of roads to extract their loot and where an indigenous patrol of a flora patrol was killed; and the fourth group in serious danger was sighted for the last time when fleeing the fires on Bananal Island.

In line with the conclusions of a summit of indigenous leaders held in the Brazilian Amazon this January, the NGO trio warns of the growing risk of ethnocide (elimination of a culture) and genocide although neither of the two terms appears in the document that will be presented to the UN.

The NGOs demand the UN to demand that the Brazilian Government strengthen the official organs for the protection of indigenous people (Funai), the environment (Ibama), biodiversity (the Chico Mendes Institute) and those in charge of supervision, remarkably weakened in recent months by a series of measures that brought together all the previous Environment ministers alive to express their concern together. They also ask for greater investment to locate isolated indigenous people and that the processes of demarcation of indigenous lands (which gives them legal protection) be resumed.

Source: elparis

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