Chief Raoni Metuktire, one of the most iconic defenders of the Amazon, on Saturday condemned Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro for blaming wildfires devastating the rainforest on indigenous people.
The far-right president sparked controversy on Tuesday with a speech to the UN General Assembly in which he defended his environmental record and said that the fires destroying large swaths of the world’s biggest rainforest were largely set by indigenous farmers using traditional slash-and-burn agriculture.
Environmentalists, who have said that the fires are mainly set to clear land for large-scale agribusiness, were quick to dispute the claim — as did Raoni, a 90-year-old chief of the Kayapo people known for traveling the world to raise awareness of threats to the Amazon.
Photo: AFP
“He said on TV that Indians were setting the planet on fire. That’s a lie. The farmers are the ones setting the fires,” Raoni told journalists during a visit to the west-central city of Sinop for a medical checkup, according to the news site G1.
“Some of them are harming the forest. Loggers, gold miners... They are the ones setting the planet on fire,” added the chief, who is famous for the large disc inserted in his lower lip and his colorful feather headdresses.
Raoni is the latest figure to accuse the Brazilian president of distorting the truth in his speech, in which Bolsonaro downplayed damage to the Amazon and said that Brazil was the victim of a “brutal disinformation campaign.”
Bolsonaro has presided over a surge in deforestation since taking office in January last year.
Last year, deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon increased 85.3 percent to a record 10,123km2 — nearly the size of Lebanon.
So far this year, the rate is down by about 5 percent, although the number of fires has increased 12 percent to 71,673.
Just south of the Amazon, the world’s largest tropical wetlands, the Pantanal, are also being devastated by fires this year.
In less than nine months, this year has already broken the annual record for the number of fires in the Brazilian Pantanal, with 16,119 fires burning more than 10 percent of the wetlands.
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