TRIGGER WARNING!!!
This sad, sick story sounds like a caricature.
Except i know from years of working with Amnesty International...it still happens all too often to those indigenous brothers and sisters around the world that live on land that individuals, governments, business interests and their hired goons want to exploit. And are not above thinking that murder is the easiest solution to their ‘problem.’
To indigenous people everywhere...this has happened to their ancestors. To our own native peoples...this was an all too common occurrence.
And still it continues.
This happened in May, and if not for another stereotype that was all too real,...drunken miners bragging of the slaughter and showing off ‘trophies’ to those in a bar...it would have gone undetected.
In the Amazon Basin, on the River Jandiatuba in Western Brazil, members of a previously ‘uncontacted’ tribe were foraging for eggs. First reports put the number at around 10. It has since been upped to 18-20 people. Over half of them were women and children. The global indigenous rights and tribal advocacy group, Survival International, reports that that can be anywhere from 1/5 of a tribe to an entire tribe. Here’s their initial statement when they thought the number was 10.
That’s when they had the misfortune of encountering a small group of illegal gold miners.
The miners later boasted about the slaughter at a bar in the nearest town to the area. They spoke of seeing the tribe and confronting them with guns, shooting two men immediately. Then killing all of them with guns, machetes and knives.
“The miners cut the tribe members’ bodies so that they wouldn’t float,” said S.I. communications officer Carla de Lello Lorenzi said, “then dropped them into the Jandiatuba River.”
And they bragged about raping at least one young woman.
They then showed ‘trophies’….indigenous tools, jewelry, a hand-carved paddle, clothes and large locks of hair.
A sickened patron at the bar secretly recorded the boasting and turned it over to authorities.
The miners were arrested and with the information that the authorities could piece together, they located the scene of the atrocity. No bodies were found as yet, but the “unmistakable scene of a massacre was evident.”
A statement from Survival International said, “If the investigation confirms the reports, it will be yet another genocidal massacre resulting directly from the Brazilian government’s failure to protect isolated tribes. Something that is guaranteed in the Constitution.
If these reports are confirmed, (Brazilian President Michel) Temer and his government bear a heavy responsibility for this genocidal attack,” said Survival International’s director, Stephen Corry. “The government has slashed funds for an agency that protects the tribes, leaving them “defenseless against thousands of invaders, gold miners, ranchers and loggers, who are desperate to steal and ransack their land. The government’s open support for those who want to open up indigenous territories is utterly shameful, and is setting indigenous rights in Brazil back decades.
All these tribes should have had their lands properly recognised and protected years ago.”
“The remote regions of Brazil are home to about 100 tribes that have either never made contact with the outside world, or rejected it.”
Over a 100 indigenous have been murdered in the area so far this year. That the authorities know off.
Indigenous leader Adelson Kora Kanamari said, “Indigenous people have been attacked and killed. President (Michel) Temer and his government bear a heavy responsibility for this genocidal attack. The invaders are landowners, hunters, miners. Many are being killed in isolation, but we don’t know the exact dates or number of deaths.”
The New York Times reports,…
Under Brazil’s president, Michel Temer, funding for indigenous affairs has been slashed. In April, Funai closed five of the 19 bases that it uses to monitor and protect isolated tribes, and reduced staffing at others. The bases are used to prevent invasions by loggers and miners and to communicate with recently contacted tribes. Three of those bases were in the Javari Valley, which is known as the Uncontacted Frontier and is believed to be home to more uncontacted tribes than anywhere else on Earth. Approximately 20 of the 103 uncontacted tribes registered in Brazil are in the Valley.
Temer sounds and acts very much like our own unpopular president. Here is the link to the very thorough NYT article...www.nytimes.com/….and you’ll recognize the dangerous caricatures in Brazil eerily resemble our own here in the U.S.
Corruption, collusion and business-as-usual.
Said Corry, “Only a global outcry can prevent more Indians from being killed.”
Now to find a way to transmute this anger and sadness into acts of justice and kindness...to help balance the scales.
In Solidarity with First Nations, Aboriginal and Indigenous Peoples.