Brazil launches raids to oust illegal miners from Indigenous land
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Loading... - Daiyu Chaw
- 09 Feb 2023
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Yanomami Indigenous leaders in Brazil’s Amazon blame illegal gold miners for a health crisis and surge in violence.
Brazil has launched raids against illegal gold miners blamed for a humanitarian crisis on the country’s largest Indigenous reservation, as President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva promised to defend the Yanomami people after years of neglect and rising violence.
The Brazilian environmental and Indigenous agencies said on Wednesday that government agents were carrying out the operation, which began earlier this week.
The Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (IBAMA) said in a statement that agents destroyed a helicopter, a plane, a bulldozer and support structures for the miners on Yanomami land in Brazil’s northernmost state of Roraima.
Two weapons and three boats with about 5,000 litres (1,320 gallons) of fuel were also seized.
For years, Yanomami Indigenous leaders have said the expansion of illegal mining on their territories was causing widespread environmental degradation, as well as increased threats, violence, and disease.
Last year, the Hutukara Yanomami Association reported that the area scarred by “garimpo” – or wildcat gold mining – on the Yanomami reservation increased by 46 percent in 2021, to 3,272 hectares (8,085 acres).
“This is the worst moment of invasion since the reservation was established 30 years ago,” the Indigenous rights group said in an April 2022 report, which was based on satellite images and interviews with local residents.
More than 20,000 miners are believed to have occupied the vast reservation, which is the size of Portugal and stretches across Roraima and Amazonas states in the northwest corner of Brazil’s Amazon.
The country’s former far-right President Jair Bolsonaro had promoted increased development in the Amazon while his administration weakened the Brazilian environmental protection and Indigenous rights agencies. Read More…
