‘Uncontacted’ tribe members allegedly killed in Brazil
THEY were members of an uncontacted tribe gathering eggs along the river in a remote part of the Amazon. Then, it appears, they had the bad luck of running into gold miners.
Now, federal prosecutors in Brazil have opened an investigation into the reported massacre of about 10 members of the tribe, the latest evidence that threats to endangered indigenous groups are on the rise in the country.
The Brazilian agency on indigenous affairs, Funai, said it had lodged a complaint with the prosecutor’s office in the state of Amazonas after the miners went to a bar near the Colombian border, and bragged about the killings. They brandished a hand-carved paddle that they said had come from the tribe, the agency said.
“It was crude bar talk,” said Leila Silvia Burger Sotto-Maior, Funai’s coordinator for uncontacted and recently contacted tribes. “They even bragged about cutting up the bodies and throwing them in the river.” The miners, she said, claimed “they had to kill them or be killed”.
Sotto-Maior said the killings were reported to have taken place last month. The indigenous affairs bureau conducted some initial interviews in the town and then took the case to police. “There is a lot of evidence, but it needs to be proved,” she said.
The prosecutor in charge of the case, Pablo Luz de Beltrand, confirmed an investigation had begun but said he could not discuss it. He said the episode was alleged to have occurred in the Javari Valley – the secondlargest indigenous reserve in Brazil – in the remote west.
“We are following up, but the territories are big and access is limited,” Beltrand said.
“These tribes are uncontacted – even Funai has only sporadic information about them. So it’s difficult work that requires all government departments working together.”
Beltrand said it was the second such episode he was investigating this year. The first reported killing of uncontacted Indians occurred in February, and that case is still open. “It was the first time that we’d had this kind of case in this region,” he said. “It’s not something that was happening before.”
Under Brazil’s president, Michel Temer, funding for indigenous affairs has been slashed. 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.
Temer, who is deeply unpopular, has sought support from powerful agricultural, ranching and mining lobbies to push economic changes through Congress and shelter him from a corruption investigation. Last month, the lower house of Congress voted to spare him from standing trial for graft in the Supreme Court, but only after the president doled out jobs and agreed to a series of concessions, which affected long-standing deforestation and land-rights regulations.