CEDI- Ecumenical Center of Documentation and Information (Sao Paulo)
Fax: 0055 11 8257861
NDI - Nucleus of Indigenous Rights (Brasilia)
Fax: 0055 61 248.6420
BRAZIL
URGENT ACTION
MASSACRE OF YANOMAMI INDIANS IN RORAIMA
AUG. 18/93
Between fourteen and ninteen Yanomami Indians were massacred by
goldminers between the Hemosh and Xidea villages in the Yanomami
territory in Roraima state in the northern Brazilian Amazon. The dead
include men, women and children who were decapitated with machetes,
according to a telex from the National Indian Foundation (FUNAI) in
Roraima to the agency's president in Brasilia. The immediate motive for
the killings is unknown. Federal police have gone to the area. This is
clearly a consequence of the impunity guaranteed the gold mine operators
by local politicans and the ommission of the federal government.
The legal recognition, or demarcation, of the Yanomami territory in
November 1991, brought Brazil's Collor de Mello government international
credibility on human rights and the environment. Some 20,000 Yanomami,
many still highly isolated from the outside world, inhabit forests of the
Brazil-Venezuela border, with about 10,000 in Brazil. A gold rush began
in the mid-eighties, and by 1987 some 80,000 goldminers had invaded the
Yanomami land, bringing virulent malaria and epidemic diseases.
Indigenous, human rights and environmental organizations in Brazil and
internationally called insistently for the legal and physical demarcation
of the Yanomami territory, and removal of the miners. Many of the miners
were removed at the end of 1990, under federal court order, but military
ministers, mining interests and the local political elite blocked the
demarcation, arguing that recognizing the entire 9.6 million hectare area
inhabited by the Yanomami in the border region represented a threat to
Brazil's national security. In 1991 Minister of Justice Jarbas
Passarinho, finding the national security arguments baseless, demarcated
the area. The military nonetheless recently raised the spectre of
"internationalization of the Amazon" through foreign interference in
Indian areas in the region, convening an extraordinary meeting of the
Committee for National Defense to discuss the issue.
Indigenous and indigenous rights organizations had for the last year
warned that reinvasions of the area, cleared of miners after the
demarcation, would spread fatal illnesses and lead to violent conflict
between the Indians and goldminers. In May, Yanomami leader Davi Kopenawa
Yanomami, on a visit to the United States, asked members of the US
Congress and US Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbit to pressure the
Brazilian government to prevent furhter reinvasions. He made the same
point in discussions in the United Nations working group on indigenous
rights in Geneva in July. There are at present some 600 goldminers
working in the area.
PLEASE FAX OR WRITE, requesting complete investigation of the case and
punishment for the guilty parties to:
Ilmo. Sr.
Ministro da Justica
Mauricio Correa
Ministerio da Justica
Esplanada dos Ministerios Bl. T
70.064 Brasilia DF
Brazil
Fax - 011-55-61-224-0954
with copy to:
Embassador of Brazil
Brazilian Embassy