Officials said on Tuesday that Brazil is assembling a task force of the military forces, police, and government organisations to drive out illicit gold miners who entered the Yanomami indigenous reservation.
On Brazil’s largest indigenous reservation, which is located on the border with Venezuela, more than 20,000 wildcat miners are to blame for bringing sickness, violence, and hunger that have led to a humanitarian crisis for remote Yanomami settlements.
Defense Minister Jose Mucio says that the military must get rid of the well-armed and helicopter-equipped miners.
“We’ll meet them soon.” “We must eradicate this evil,” Mucio said in an interview with Band TV.
The air force will control the airspace and make suspicious flights land, while the navy will patrol waterways and seize the boats and dredges used by miners, he claimed.
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has promised to put an end to unlawful mining on territories that are protected by reservations, according to Joenia Wapichana, who will soon become the first indigenous person to lead the government’s indigenous affairs agency, Funai.
Speaking to journalists on the journalism platform Sumama, run by Amazon, Wapichana stated that she was unable to provide specifics about the upcoming operation in order to prevent alerting the miners who had infiltrated Yanomami land.
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“The message from President Lula is that it will happen soon and cannot wait much longer; therefore, we have to let the police forces arrange the operation in secrecy,” she stated.
According to Wapichana, the task force will include the military, the Federal Police, the environmental protection agency Ibama, Funai, and a number of ministries.
Mercury, which is used by miners to extract metal from ore and the soil, has contaminated the rivers. They use rivers to transport larger equipment and fuel to their prospects, which are muddy ponds where they dredge for gold in forest clearings. They fly supply planes to covert airstrips in the rainforest.
Medical research demonstrates that the mercury used by the miners killed the fish and tainted the Yanomami’s water supply.
The 28,000 Yanomami have died as a result of widespread starvation caused by the miners’ association with well-armed gangs terrorising indigenous communities that are now unable to feed themselves for the first time.
In the Yanomami territory, Lula declared a medical emergency last week. On Monday, his government declared a no-fly zone over the reservation and took steps to obstruct river traffic heading to gold mines.
According to Wapichana, the government will take action against the financial and organised crime organisations that support and finance illegal gold mining and money laundering.
Jair Bolsonaro, Lula’s right-wing predecessor, supported mining on indigenous territories that were already protected, and his administration ignored incursions by savage miners and illegal loggers into indigenous reservations.
File: On June 20, 2022, Jair Bolsonaro, who was president of Brazil at the time, watches during a ceremony at the Planalto Palace in Brasilia.
Wapichana declared that “a new age has begun.” She asserted that those accountable for the humanitarian situation the Yanomami are going through will be held accountable for their negligence, as well as possibly for perpetrating genocide.
Reuters
