Brazil: isolated indigenous people victim of "genocide", NGO says

The Brazilian indigenous people Awa Guaja, who lives isolated in the heart of the Amazon, are "undergoing genocide", said Wednesday the group of Guardians of the forest.

Read also: Deforestation intensifies in the Amazon

"We must prevent incursions into our territories, otherwise the Awa Guaja will die," said Olimpio Guajaja, head of the Guardians of the Forest, in a statement relayed by the NGO Survival. "We must again warn the Brazilian government and the international community that the Awa Guaja are undergoing genocide," he insisted.

Illegal activities

The Guardians of the Forest collective was founded in 2012 in Maranhao, an Amazonian state in northeast Brazil, to prevent incursions by traffickers of wood or illegal gold washers into land supposedly reserved for the natives. Several of these Guardians have been murdered in recent months.

The collective has set itself the goal of preserving the environment by trying to prevent deforestation and protect isolated peoples like the Awa Guaja, nearly 400 people living cut off from the world in the Maranhao.

According to the Forest Guardians, the Awa Guaja are increasingly forced to move closer to villages of other tribes, "because their territory is being eaten away by illegal deforestation activities which devastate the last remaining areas of preserved forest". “Non-natives make lots of promises that they don't keep. They bring diseases which spread because they do not know how to respect nature, which is sacred to us, ”concludes the text.

Coronavirus, a new threat

The Covid-19 pandemic is a new threat to indigenous peoples already severely affected by deforestation which has steadily increased since the coming to power a year and a half ago of far-right president Jair Bolsonaro. The latter claims in particular to open their territories to mining activities.

Read also: Bolsonaro admits that coronavirus "is the biggest challenge" in Brazil

According to the Association of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (Apib), the virus has already spread among 40 indigenous peoples, contaminating 537 people, with a heavy toll of 102 dead. According to the last census, dating from 2010, nearly 800,000 indigenous people of more than 300 ethnicities live in Brazil.

The country has more than 16,000 dead, including 549 in the Maranhao, where the Awa Guaja live, and 1,413 in the state of Amazonas (north), which concentrates the most indigenous populations.