Brazil readies task force to expel miners

BRASILIA: Brazil is preparing a task force of armed forces, police and government agencies to expel illegal gold miners who invaded the Yanomami indigenous reservation, officials said yesterday.

More than 20,000 wildcat miners are blamed for bringing disease, violence and hunger that have caused a humanitarian crisis for isolated Yanomami villages on Brazil’s largest indigenous reservation, on the border with Venezuela.

Defence Minister Jose Mucio said the military was needed to drive out the miners, who were well armed and had helicopters.

‘‘We will soon confront them. We need to root out this evil,’’

Mucio said.

With army troops on the ground, the navy would patrol rivers and confiscate miners’ boats and dredges while the air force would control the airspace and force suspicious planes to land, he said.

Joenia Wapichana, who in a few days will become the first indigenous person to head the government’s indigenous affairs agency, Funai, said President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva had pledged to end illegal mining on protected reservation lands.

Wapichana said she could not give details of the imminent operation in order to not alert the miners who had invaded the Yanomami territory.

‘‘We have to let the police forces organise the operation in secret. The message from President Lula is that it will happen soon and cannot delay long,’’ she said.

Wapichana said the task force, as in past offensives against illegal miners, would involve the federal police, environmental protection agency Ibama, Funai and several ministries, as well as the military.

The miners had polluted waters with mercury used to separate metal from ore and earth.

They operated supply planes to clandestine jungle airstrips and used the rivers to take heavier machinery and fuel to their prospects, which are muddy ponds where they dredge for gold in forest clearings.

Medical studies showed the mercury used by the miners had killed the fish and contaminated the water that the Yanomami relied on.

The miners were increasingly associated with wellarmed gangs that had terrorised indigenous communities that for the first time cannot feed themselves, resulting in widespread malnutrition and deaths among the 28,000 Yanomami.

Lula last week declared a medical emergency in the Yanomami territory. On Monday his government ordered a nofly airspace over the reservation and steps to block river traffic heading to gold prospects.

Wapichana said the government would move against the organised crime and financial groups that supplied and funded the illegal mining, and laundered the gold.

Lula’s rightwing predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, advocated mining on protected indigenous lands, and his government turned a blind eye to invasions of indigenous reservations by wildcat miners and illegal loggers.

‘‘We are in a new era,’’ Wapichana said.