Tue, May 12, 2020 page14

• ‘We are on the eve of a genocide’: Brazil urged to save Amazon tribes from COVID-19 原住民恐因武漢肺炎種族滅絕 各界疾呼巴西政府行動

  • • 
    • 
    • 

  Brazil’s leaders must take immediate action to save the country’s indigenous peoples from a COVID-19 “genocide,” a global coalition of artists, celebrities, scientists and intellectuals has said.

  In an open letter to the Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, figures including Madonna, Oprah Winfrey, Brad Pitt, David Hockney and Paul McCartney warned the pandemic meant indigenous communities in the Amazon faced “an extreme threat to their very survival.”

  “Five centuries ago, these ethnic groups were decimated by diseases brought by European colonizers… Now, with this new scourge spreading rapidly across Brazil… [they] may disappear completely since they have no means of combating COVID-19,” they wrote.

  

  Antonio Borges Serum, of the Hunikui ethnic group from Acre, Brazil, listens to a speech during a meeting by Amazonian indigenous people in Puerto Maldonado, Peru, on Jan. 18, 2018. 來自巴西阿克雷州之胡尼奎族人安東尼歐‧波吉‧塞倫，二○一八年一月十八日在秘魯馬爾多納多港舉行之亞馬遜原住民族會議中聆聽演說。

  Photo: AP 照片：美聯社

  The organizer of the petition, the Brazilian photojournalist Sebastiao Salgado, said trespassers including wildcat gold miners and illegal loggers must be expelled immediately from indigenous lands to stop them importing an illness that has killed more than 280,000 people around the world, including more than 11,000 in Brazil.

  “We are on the eve of a genocide,” Salgado, who has spent nearly four decades documenting the Amazon and its inhabitants, told the Guardian.

  Even before COVID-19, Brazil’s indigenous peoples were locked in what activists call a historic struggle for survival. Critics accuse Bolsonaro, a far-right populist in power since January last year, of stimulating the invasion of indigenous reserves and dismantling the government agencies supposed to protect them.

  

  In this photo taken Aug. 26 last year, children of the Nambikwara Sarare tribe climb trees as they play in their indigenous reserve in the southwestern Amazon, near Conquista D’Oeste, in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso. About 98 percent of all Brazil’s indigenous lands lie within the Amazon. 納比夸拉沙拉利部落之兒童，在西南亞馬遜地區之原住民保護區中爬樹玩耍。去年八月二十六日攝於巴西馬托格羅索州西孔基斯塔鎮近郊。巴西之原住民土地約有百分之九十八是位於亞馬遜河流域內。

  Photo: AP 照片：美聯社

  “Indigenous communities have never been so under attack… The government has no respect at all for the indigenous territories,” Salgado said, pointing to crippling budget cuts and the recent sacking of several of top environmental officials who had targeted illegal prospectors and loggers. But the letter said the pandemic had made an already bleak outlook under Bolsonaro even worse by paralyzing what protection efforts remained.

  “As a result, there is nothing to protect indigenous peoples from the risk of genocide caused by an infection introduced by outsiders who enter their land illegally,” argued the signatories, who also include the supermodels Gisele Bundchen and Naomi Campbell, the author Mario Vargas Llosa, the artist Ai Weiwei, the architect Norman Foster and the actor Meryl Streep.

  Fears COVID-19 could devastate indigenous communities grew last month when the death of a Yanomami teenager revived horrific memories of epidemics caused by roadbuilders and gold prospectors in the 1970s and 1980s.

  

  Witoto indigenous nursing assistant Vanda Ortega takes care of a patient during a healthcare visit in the Parque das Tribos, an indigenous community in the suburbs of Manaus, Amazonas State, Brazil, on May 3 during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic. 武漢肺炎新型冠狀病毒大流行中，原住民維托托族護理員范達‧奧特加五月三日在巴西亞馬遜州馬瑙斯近郊之原住民社區「部落園區」進行醫療訪視，為患者進行護理。

  Photo: AFP 照片：法新社

  “In some of the villages I knew, measles killed 50 percent of the population. If COVID does the same thing it would be a massacre,” said Carlo Zaquini, an Italian missionary who has spent decades working with the Yanomami.

  Salgado — who is calling for the creation of an army-led taskforce to evict intruders from protected areas — admitted Bolsonaro would not act of his own volition. But he believed international pressure could force the government to do so, as happened last year when global outrage resulted in the military being deployed to extinguish fires in the Amazon.

  “Just in the Brazilian Amazon we have 103 indigenous groups which have never been contacted — they represent humanity’s pre-history,” Salgado said. “We cannot allow all of this to disappear.”

  (The Guardian)

  全球多位藝人、名人、科學家及知識分子共同表示，巴西領導人必須立刻採取行動，以免武漢肺炎造成巴西原住民「種族滅絕」。

  在一封致巴西總統雅伊爾‧波索納洛的公開信中，包括瑪丹娜、歐普拉‧溫芙蕾、布萊德‧彼特、大衛‧霍克尼和保羅‧麥卡尼在內的人士警告說，武漢肺炎大流行意味亞馬遜河流域原住民族群面臨「對其生存的極端威脅」。

  他們寫道：「五個世紀前，這些族群大量死於歐洲殖民者所帶來的疾病……現在，隨著此新災禍在巴西迅速蔓延……這些族群可能會完全消失，因為他們無從抵抗武漢肺炎」。

  該請願書之發起者為巴西攝影記者塞巴斯蒂安‧薩爾加多，他表示，必須立即驅逐擅自入侵原住民土地的人，包括非法開採金礦者及盜伐木者，以阻止他們輸入已造成全世界逾二十八萬人死亡的武漢肺炎，其中包括巴西的一萬一千多人。

  「我們正處於種族滅絕的前夕」，薩爾加多對《衛報》表示。他花了將近四十年的光陰記錄亞馬遜地區及其住民。

  即便在武漢肺炎發生之前，巴西的原住民就已深陷於社運人士所形容的「歷史存亡之掙扎」。評論家譴責二○一九年一月上台的極右翼民粹主義者波索納洛，指控他鼓勵人們入侵原住民保護區，並解散了守護這些保護區的行政單位。

  「原住民族群從未如此受到夾攻……政府根本就不尊重原住民的土地」，薩爾加多並指出，預算嚴重削減，且最近有數名對付非法採礦及伐木者的高級環境官員遭到解職。這封請願書寫道，武漢肺炎這大流行病使得僅存的保護工作陷入癱瘓，讓波索納洛執政下已然艱困的情況更是雪上加霜。

  「結果是，沒有任何措施可以保護原住民，使其免於感染非法進入其土地之外來者所帶來的疾病，而可能導致種族滅絕」，請願書寫道。該請願書之簽署人還包括超模吉賽兒‧邦臣及娜歐蜜‧坎貝兒、作家馬利歐‧巴爾加斯‧尤薩、藝術家艾未未、建築師諾曼‧福斯特，以及演員梅莉‧史翠普。

  上個月，一名亞諾馬米族少年的死，喚醒了一九七○與八○年代築路工人及淘金者帶來流行病的可怕記憶，讓人越發恐懼武漢肺炎可能毀滅原住民族群。

  「據我所知，麻疹在一些村莊造成了百分之五十的人口死亡。如果換做是武漢肺炎，那將會是一場大屠殺」，與亞諾馬米族人已共事數十年的義大利傳教士卡洛‧札奎尼表示。

  薩爾加多呼籲建立一支由軍隊領導的特遣部隊，以驅逐入侵保護區的人——但他承認，波索納洛總統不會主動去做。不過他認為，國際壓力可以迫使政府行動，如同去年的亞馬遜森林大火，全球所激起的憤慨促使巴西政府派軍隊去滅火。

  「亞馬遜河流域光是在巴西境內的地區，就有一百零三個從未與外界接觸過的原住民族群——他們代表了人類的史前歷史」，薩爾加多說道。「我們不能讓這一切都消失」。

  (台北時報林俐凱編譯)

  Follow Up

  讀後練習

  Did you know?

  Following Christopher Columbus’ arrival in the Americas and the Caribbean in 1492, European colonists killed off huge numbers of people in conflicts and also by spreading disease, reducing the indigenous population by 90 percent during the century.

  Because Native American populations were not previously exposed to most diseases introduced by Europeans, they had not been able to build up individual or herd immunity to those diseases. Environmental historian Alfred Crosby coined the term “virgin soil epidemic” to describe this immunological vulnerability.

  (Lin Lee-kai, Taipei Times)

  For your information

  TODAY’S WORDS 今日單字

  1. indigenous adj. 原住民的；土著的 (yuan2 zhu4 min2 de5; tu3 zhu4 de5) 2. genocide n. 種族滅絕 (zhong3 zu2 mie4 jue2) 3. pandemic n. 大流行病 (da4 liu2 xing2 bing4) 4. ethnic group phr. 族群 (zu2 qun2) 5. decimate v. 成批殺死 (cheng2 pi1 sha1 si3) 6. colonizer n. 殖民者 (zhi2 min2 zhe3) 7. trespasser n. 侵入者 (qin1 ru4 zhe3) 8. far-right populist phr. 極右翼民粹主義者 (ji2 you4 yi4 min2 cui4 zhu3 yi4 zhe3)
• Most Popular

  • 1

    Chinese ships expelled from near Pratas Island

  • 2

    Taiwan to lose 6.67m workers in two retirement waves

  • 3

    ‘Fujian’ carrier to pose steep defense challenge

  • 4

    Cash handouts could start next month

  • 5

    AIT comments on Taiwan accurate: State Department