Brazil’s last uncontacted tribes face “genocide” thanks to Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s efforts to overturn existing policies to protect the country’s indigenous people, a group of leading experts have warned in an open letter to the far-right leader.
The alert came after one of the country’s leading experts on isolated and recently contacted indigenous people was abruptly dismissed from Brazil’s National Indian Foundation (FUNAI), with no reason given.
FIRING
Bruno Pereira, who this year successfully led the biggest expedition in decades to contact a voluntarily isolated indigenous tribe, was fired last week.
No reason was given, but the move has been interpreted as another step in Bolsonaro’s campaign to strip back protections from the country’s indigenous people.
Pereira’s sudden dismissal “represents another backwards step in the policy to protect isolated indigenous peoples,” the letter reads.
“It’s almost as if this government has a rule: to remove dedicated and competent people and put incompetents in their place,” said Jose Carlos Meirelles, a signatory of the letter who pioneered the “no contact” policy adopted by FUNAI during his four decades with the foundation.
Isolated or recently contacted indigenous people have little or no contact with the outside world, but are under increasing threat from illegal loggers, land-grabbers and miners who encroach on their territories.
Experts say that under Bolsonaro, violent land invasions have increased significantly.
According to a recent report by Brazil’s Indigenous Missionary Council, 153 indigenous territories had been invaded since January — compared with 76 last year.
DRAFT LEGISLATION
Last week, Bolsonaro’s Minister of Mines and Energy Bento Albuquerque announced that draft legislation to allow mining and agriculture on indigenous lands should be ready later this month.
Contacted by the Guardian, Pereira said he could not comment on the reason for his dismissal as he did not have any information about it.
He said FUNAI should explain why he was fired.
“Isolated indigenous people are extremely vulnerable. They don’t have political support; they don’t speak with journalists or other indigenous groups,” Pereira said.
FUNAI described Pereira’s dismissal as part of a management restructuring to “optimize work in progress.”
His replacement, Paula Wolthers de Lorena Pires, is an anthropologist and indigenous specialist.
NEW FRONTIER
In April, Pereira led a mission to protect an isolated tribe from violent conflict with another group in the far-flung Javari Valley Reserve, near the border with Peru.
The region concentrates the largest number of isolated and recently contacted tribes in the world.
The Guardian last year accompanied Pereira on a 1,000km expedition to the region.
The vast, resource-rich region is swiftly becoming a new economic frontier for armed poachers, loggers, wildcat miners and drug traffickers.
Last month, a contractor who manned a FUNAI base in the Javari Valley — which had been attacked several times — was murdered by gunmen on a motorbike in Tabatinga on the border with Colombia and Peru.
Police are still investigating the killing.
MINERAL DEPOSITS: The Pacific nation is looking for new foreign partners after its agreement with Canada’s Metals Co was terminated ‘mutually’ at the end of last year Pacific nation Kiribati says it is exploring a deep-sea mining partnership with China, dangling access to a vast patch of Pacific Ocean harboring coveted metals and minerals. Beijing has been ramping up efforts to court Pacific nations sitting on lucrative seafloor deposits of cobalt, nickel and copper — recently inking a cooperation deal with Cook Islands. Kiribati opened discussions with Chinese Ambassador Zhou Limin (周立民) after a longstanding agreement with leading deep-sea mining outfit The Metals Co fell through. “The talk provides an exciting opportunity to explore potential collaboration for the sustainable exploration of the deep-ocean resources in Kiribati,” the government said
The head of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, was sacked yesterday, days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he no longer trusts him, and fallout from a report on the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack. “The Government unanimously approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposal to end ISA Director Ronen Bar’s term of office,” a statement said. He is to leave his post when his successor is appointed by April 10 at the latest, the statement said. Netanyahu on Sunday cited an “ongoing lack of trust” as the reason for moving to dismiss Bar, who joined the agency in 1993. Bar, meant to
Indonesia’s parliament yesterday amended a law to allow members of the military to hold more government roles, despite criticisms that it would expand the armed forces’ role in civilian affairs. The revision to the armed forces law, pushed mainly by Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s coalition, was aimed at expanding the military’s role beyond defense in a country long influenced by its armed forces. The amendment has sparked fears of a return to the era of former Indonesian president Suharto, who ex-general Prabowo once served and who used military figures to crack down on dissent. “Now it’s the time for us to ask the
The central Dutch city of Utrecht has installed a “fish doorbell” on a river lock that lets viewers of an online livestream alert authorities to fish being held up as they make their springtime migration to shallow spawning grounds. The idea is simple: An underwater camera at Utrecht’s Weerdsluis lock sends live footage to a Web site. When somebody watching the site sees a fish, they can click a button that sends a screenshot to organizers. When they see enough fish, they alert a water worker who opens the lock to let the fish swim through. Now in its fifth year, the
RSS