Two men of the Yanomami ethnic group were killed by illegal gold miners in Brazil, an organization defending the rights of the indigenous people denounced on Friday.
The Hutukara Yanomami (HAY) association says it fears “that the families of the murdered Yanomami decide to take reprisals against illegal miners” and that the incident will trigger “a cycle of violence”.
The drama happened in early June, but due to the isolation in which the Yanomami natives live, it was only reported to the authorities this week by a man accompanying his wife to the Boa Vista hospital, the capital of the state of Roraima.
“Act urgently”
“This new murder of Yanomamis by illegal miners must be the subject of a thorough investigation and underlines the need for the Brazilian government to act urgently to immediately eliminate all illegal miners operating on Yanomami lands”, claims the association Hutukara Yanomami.
At the beginning of June, the leaders of indigenous organizations launched a campaign to demand that the Brazilian authorities expel the gold panners operating in the Yanomami territories, in order to curb the spread of the new coronavirus in the north of the country.
Entitled #ForaGarimpoForaCovid (Outside gold panning, outside Covid), the operation denounces the comings and goings of gold washers on Yanomami lands, in search of gold, without any control.
According to NGOs such as Survival International and the Socio-environmental Institute (ISA), some 20,000 gold washers operate in the Yanonami territory, which covers 96,000 km².
Decimated by diseases
The Yanomami, who number around 27,000 in Brazil, were decimated like other ethnic groups in the 1970s by diseases spread by European settlers and the arrival of unscrupulous gold prospectors.
Brazil has nearly 800,000 indigenous people from over 300 ethnic groups.
The South American giant totals nearly 56,000 deaths from the new coronavirus, the heaviest death toll in the world after the United States.
Created: 27.06.2020, 08h29
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