"We are in great danger": In Amazon, indigenous Waiapi chief is killed by illegal miners

[jpak]

Source: NBC News

Illegal gold miners armed with automatic weapons and shotguns, invaded the remote indigenous community of the Waiapi and murdered one its chiefs in Brazil’s northern Amazon last week, according to several of the group’s leaders and indigenous rights activists.

The body of chief Emyra Waiapi, 68, was discovered last Monday with several stab wounds, including to his genitals, one of the group’s leaders, Viseni Waiapi, said in an audio message sent to NBC reporters Saturday in Portuguese.

“We are in great danger,” Viseni said. The invaders assaulted women and children and were accompanied by a pit bull as they roamed around several Waiapi villages day and night last week, using special night vision goggles to navigate the area in the dark, he said.

This attack on Waiapi land is one of the latest in a slew of ongoing, and increasingly frequent, invasions and assaults on indigenous territories throughout Brazil by illegal miners, ranchers and logger

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Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/we-are-great-danger-amazon-indigenous-waiapi-chief-killed-illegal-n1035806

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[ck4829]

1. K&R

[orangecrush]

2. Send in military

To defend the indigenous people and put a stop to this.

[Judi Lynn]

3. That's not going to happen. Brazil's new fascist racist misogynist homophobic president HATES

indigenous people and promised even during his campaign he planned to raze the land their ancestors, down to the present inhabitants have always called home, the Amazon forest, also known as "The Lungs of the world."


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JULY 29, 2019 / 1:01 PM / UPDATED 4 HOURS AGO
Brazil's Bolsonaro says no evidence indigenous leader murdered
3 MIN READ

BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro on Monday said there was no evidence an indigenous chief, whose death was decried by the U.N. commissioner for human rights, was killed by wildcat miners said to have invaded protected tribal lands.

The far-right Bolsonaro has repeatedly criticized the existence of protected lands, saying there are too many of them and that they prevent Brazil from profiting from its natural resources.

Emyra Wajapi, a leader of the Wajapi tribe who lives on a reservation near Brazil’s northwestern border with French Guiana, was found dead last week.

. . .

“There is no solid evidence as of now that that Indian was murdered,” Bolsonaro told reporters in Brasilia.

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet, a former president of Chile, called for an investigation, describing Wajapi’s death “a disturbing symptom of the growing problem of encroachment on indigenous land – especially forests – by miners, loggers and farmers in Brazil.”

In a statement, Bachelet also urged Bolsonaro to reconsider his government's proposal to open up more of the Amazon rainforest area to mining. Under Bolsonaro, deforestation of the Amazon has accelerated here, according to a state-run agency.

More:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-brazil-politics/brazils-bolsonaro-says-no-evidence-indigenous-leader-murdered-idUSKCN1UO208

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JAIR BOLSONARO PRAISED THE GENOCIDE OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLE. NOW HE’S EMBOLDENING ATTACKERS OF BRAZIL’S AMAZONIAN COMMUNITIES.
Sam Cowie
February 16 2019, 6:31 a.m.

“THE BRAZILIAN CAVALRY was very incompetent. Competent, yes, was the American cavalry that decimated its Indians in the past and nowadays does not have this problem in their country.” That’s the opinion of Brazil’s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, expressed on the floor of Congress in 1998. His views appear to have changed little since then; in a video message to supporters 18 years later, he promised to revoke the protected status of an Indigenous reserve in 2019 and in the next breath added, “We’re going to give a rifle and a carry permit to every farmer.”

The protection of Indigenous lands is guaranteed by the Brazilian constitution to preserve the rights and cultures of groups that have been persecuted for centuries. Brazil is home to approximately 900,000 Indigenous citizens from 305 tribes, most of whom live on reserves, but more than half of the locations claimed by Indigenous groups have not yet received government recognition. Bolsonaro, consistent with his anti-Indigenous stance throughout his career, said in a televised interview shortly after his election that if it were up to him, “there won’t be any more demarcations of Indigenous land.”

Any rollback of protections for Indigenous lands would pose a dire threat to the Amazon rainforest, which is being rapidly cut down by ranchers, farmers, and extractive industries.

Bolsonaro’s attitudes toward Brazil’s Indigenous people and their lands are similar to those of the military dictatorship that ruled the country from 1964 to 1985, during which time thousands of tribespeople were killed and thousands more were driven from their lands to make way for large infrastructure projects and farms.

More:
https://theintercept.com/2019/02/16/brazil-bolsonaro-indigenous-land/

[orangecrush]

5. Horrible news.

We obviously will have to rid ourselves of our own fascist racist misogynist before we can help anyone else.

Very saddened to hear of this.

[Judi Lynn]

4. Men Invaded Indigenous Village and Assassinated Waipi Leader

10 to 15 men carried large guns
Jul.29.2019 1:21PM

Fabiano Maisonnave
Rubens Valente

MANAUS and BRASÍLIA
Up to 15 men armed with high-caliber weapons have invaded the Waiãpi Indigenous Land in western Amapá in an attempt to intimate indigenous people living in a remote region of the state, according to FUNAI, Brazil’s indigenous agency.

Based on reports from the Waiãpis, FUNAI says the group assasinated leader Emyra Waiãpi last week (there were no witnesses, and the body was only found the next day).



Waiãpi Indigenous - Crédito: Fiona Watson/Survival International
The indigenous agency has not yet arrived at the scene of the crime, accessible only through a journey by car, boat, and on foot.

The invasion comes amid repeated statements by President Jair Bolsonaro (PSL) that he intends to legalize mining in indigenous lands, a campaign promise. The change in legislation, however, needs congressional approval.

The FUNAI document states that the invaders are sleeping in Aramirã village, forcing the Waiãpis to move to a neighboring community that is a 40-minute walk away.

https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/internacional/en/brazil/2019/07/men-invaded-indigenous-village-and-assassinated-waiapi-leader.shtml

[rwsanders]

8. The cruelty & psychosis required to commit such an act is beyond comprehension to a normal mind

Celine Cousteau has produced a documentary on this:
https://vimeo.com/322789465

She is the third generation of Cousteau's to explore the region. She accompanied Jacques in the early 1980's. His book on the region is amazing and lays the baseline for the events we are seeing. I found a grainy copy of the video that was very good also. Jean Michel returned to the region and has another documentary from about 2006. I have a copy of this also and keep forgetting to finish it (long story).

So I look forward to seeing this documentary, to see the changes (probably devastating) that are occurring in the region due to rampant consumerism. Billionaires can only exist as long as they keep the middle class quiet by exploiting developing nations to give the rest of us cheap goods. If not for slave goods, then they'd have to pay the middle class well and they'd have to get by on mere millions (I'm sure they'd have a big sad).

[Backseat Driver]

6. Did anyone watch Gold Rush series - Parker's Trail

as he explores the locations in Papua New Guinea visited by his granddad years ago to gain access to a secret gold mine area his gramps spoke about. Parker encountered gangs with machetes on the rural backroads and also poverty-stricken rural residents, just kids really, who put their lives on the line to steal gold from a huge commercial gold mine that encroached on their area of jungle. I know the series shows the exact opposite of "bad guys" endangering both the strangers' and the locals' lives here, but I can easily see it happening where the greed is high and the corruption rules for the prizes of valuable resources. It saddens me that there's so much violence against those that are merely poor or just live simply on the land all around the world.

[rockfordfile]

7. Brazil should have sanctions put on them for this murder and terrorism