Eight to 10 members of a remote indigenous group were allegedly killed by men working for illegal prospectors in Javari Valley

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Brazilian authorities are investigating reports of a massacre of up to 10 people from an isolated tribe in the Amazon by illegal gold miners.

The killings, alleged to have taken place in Javari Valley, are claimed to have been carried out by men working for gold prospectors who dredge illegally in the region’s rivers.

If proven, the murders would confirm that severe budget cuts to Brazil’s indigenous agency are having deadly effects. The agency was forced to close two bases in the same region earlier this year. Investigators face a 12-day boat trip just to reach the area.

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Pablo Beltrand, the prosecutor from the remote Amazon town of Tabatinga – near the Peruvian border and 700 miles from the Amazonas state capital, Manaus – said his team was first informed about the possible murders in the Javari Valley at the beginning of August. A fifth of Brazil’s uncontacted tribes live in this wild region.

“We received a communication from federal government,” he said. “The ongoing investigation is about the possible death of indigenous people.”

Beltrand said he could not give more information about the inquiry but said that two men arrested recently in a police and army operation into illegal gold prospecting in the area were not connected to the case.

Brazil’s National Indian Foundation, known as Funai, first sent a team of three to the small town of São Paulo de Olivença after receiving reports that men working for gold prospectors had boasted in a bar of killing a group of eight to 10 indigenous people.

Leila Sotto-Maior, coordinator for isolated and recently contacted Indians at Funai, said the men had brandished a paddle and a small bag used for carrying food that they claimed they had taken from their victims.

“They were saying they killed indigenous people and threw them in the river,” Sotto-Maior said. She emphasised that the massacre has yet to be confirmed.

“It is very difficult to investigate something like this after time [has passed]. We don’t have the bases,” she said.

Funai has had its budget almost halved this year by the business-friendly government of President Michel Temer. His government recently proposed to reduce the protected area of Amazon forest and has announced plans to allow mining and development in other protected areas.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Burnt communal houses of uncontacted Indians, pictured in December 2016, could be signs of another attack in the region. Photograph: Courtesy of Funai

Sotto-Maior’s department at Funai has less than £600,000 to spend this year protecting 103 tribes of non-contacted indigenous people across this vast country, as well as recently contacted groups. Around 20 isolated groups are believed to live in the Javari Valley, where around 80 recently contacted indigenous people also live.

“To know we do not have the capacity to stop something like this … it’s very difficult,” Sotto-Maior said.

Cleber Buzatto, executive secretary of the non-profit Indigenous Missionary Council, said cuts to Funai budgets and the closing of bases in areas with isolated tribes increased the risk of attack.

“This is a mechanism of encouragement of invasion of territories and makes attacks against isolated Indians more probable,” he said. In June, UN rights experts denounced a surge of killings related to rural land disputes in Brazil this year.

A spokeswoman for Brazil’s federal police said: “The investigation is still ongoing to ascertain the provenance of the information.”

A spokesman for the Brazilian army said an operation carried out in the same area between 28 August and 3 September had destroyed four illegal gold dredgers. The documents of two others were being analysed.</s>Members of an uncontacted tribe in Brazil's Amazon Basin were photographed by air in 2008. At least 10 members of a tribe in this region were allegedly killed by gold miners last month. (Ho New / Reuters)

At least 10 members of an uncontacted tribe in Brazil’s Amazon Basin were allegedly killed last month by illegal gold miners, according to Survival International.

The organization, which advocates for indigenous rights, said the massacre included women and children and may have wiped out one-fifth of the tribe.

Members of the tribe were gathering eggs along a river in the Javari Valley, in the country’s remote west, when they came across the miners, The New York Times reported. The miners later boasted about the slaughter at a bar in the nearest town, and even showed off a hand-carved paddle they claimed to have stolen as a trophy.

“It was crude bar talk,” Leila Silvia Burger Sotto-Maior, Funai’s coordinator for uncontacted and recently contacted tribes, told the Times. “They even bragged about cutting up the bodies and throwing them in the river.”

Funai is Brazil’s agency for indigenous affairs and its budget was recently cut under President Michel Temer. Survival International described Temer’s government as “fiercely anti-Indian, and has close ties to the country’s powerful and anti-indigenous agribusiness lobby.”

Survival International called the attack “genocidal” and said Temer and his government bore “heavy responsibility” for it. According to Stephen Corry, Survival International’s director:

“The slashing of Funai’s funds has left dozens of uncontacted tribes defenseless against thousands of invaders ― gold miners, ranchers and loggers ― who are desperate to steal and ransack their lands. All these tribes should have had their lands properly recognized and protected years ago ― the government’s open support for those who want to open up indigenous territories is utterly shameful, and is setting indigenous rights in Brazil back decades.”

At least two other tribes in the region have seen their land invaded and are now surrounded by ranchers and others, Survival International reported.

Adelson Kora Kanamari, leader of the Warikama Djapar tribe, told the Amazon Real portal that the situation for indigenous people in the region was “very critical” and that between 18 and 21 people have been killed in attacks, AFP reported.

“The invaders are landowners, hunters, miners,” Kanamari said. “Many (indigenous) are being killed in isolation, but we don’t know the exact dates or number of deaths.”

For more news videos visit Yahoo View, available on iOS and Android.</s>Sept. 11 (UPI) -- The Brazilian government said it opened an investigation into the deaths of 10 members of an endangered indigenous tribe allegedly at the hands of miners.

Funai, the indigenous affairs agency, said a complaint was lodged with the prosecutor's office in the Brazilian state of Amazonas, near the Colombian border, after local gold miners bragged in August that they killed members of an unidentified tribe.

Those killed were part of one of 103 tribes in Brazil regarded as "uncontacted," defined by the London-based activist organization Survival Unlimited as having "no peaceful contact with anyone in the mainstream or dominant society."

"These could be entire peoples or smaller groups of already contacted tribes."

While ethnic tribe members are Brazilian citizens, they reside in jungles in independent groups, and have no involvement in modern society.

Miners routinely encroach on the tribal lands, and land disputes have led to the deaths of at least 50 indigenous tribe members, rural workers and land activists through the first seven months of the year, Brazil's Land Pastoral Commission said.

Government and police agents have been accused of some of the deaths, The New York Times reported Monday. The Javari Valley, the area of the alleged killings, is known as the Uncontacted Frontier, and includes more uncontacted tribes than anywhere on earth, Survival Unlimited said.

Speaking of the miners involved in the incident leading to the investigation, Leila Silvia Burger Sotto-Maior of Fumai said, "It was crude bar talk. They even bragged about cutting up the bodies and throwing them in the river."

Fumai said the miners allegedly displayed a hand-carved wooden paddle as a trophy of the killings.</s>Ten members of an indigenous Brazilian tribe may have been brutally murdered by gold miners. Elizabeth Keatinge (@elizkeatinge) has more.</s>Brazilian prosecutors are investigating reports that gold prospectors may have killed members of a so-called uncontacted tribe in the Amazon.

Brazil's National Indian Foundation asked prosecutors to look into the matter after prospectors were heard discussing an attack on indigenous people who live in the Javari Valley near the border with Peru. The foundation said in a statement Monday that some prospectors have been detained for questioning, but they have not confirmed any deaths.

Federal prosecutors confirm that they have opened an investigation, but haven't given any details.

Survival International says the area is home to more uncontacted tribes than anywhere else on Earth. Isolated peoples are particularly vulnerable and indigenous groups in Brazil in general have complained that their way of life is increasingly under threat from land conflicts.</s>The Brazilian government has opened an investigation into the deaths of 10 members of an uncontacted indigenous tribe, allegedly at the hands of gold miners.

Authorities said the prosecutor's office in the Amazonas state, near the Colombian border, opened an investigation after learning that the miners had bragged about killing members of an unidentified tribe.

Brazil's National Indian Foundation said some of the prospectors have been detained for questioning, but they have not confirmed any deaths.

London-based activist organization Survival International says those killed were a part of Brazil's 103 uncontacted tribes, defined as having "no peaceful contact with anyone in the mainstream or dominant society."

Miners routinely encroach on tribal lands in Brazil, often ending in deadly encounters.</s>Brazilian prosecutors have launched an investigation following unconfirmed reports that goldminers killed more than 10 members of an uncontacted tribe living in the Amazon.

Funai, a national agency protecting the rights of indigenous people, reported the goldminers to prosecutors in the state of Amazonas after they were overheard bragging about the killings in a bar last month.

They were brandishing a hand-carved paddle knife which they said belonged to the tribe, the agency reported.

Leila Silvia Burger Sotto-Maior, Funai's coordinator for uncontacted tribes, told the New York Times that the conversation was "crude bar talk".

"They even bragged about cutting up the bodies and throwing them in the river," she said, adding that the miners claimed that they "had to kill [the tribe members] or be killed".

"There is a lot of evidence, but it needs to be proven," Sotto-Maior said.

Women and children are believed to be among the dead, according to Funai.

The massacre occurred in an area known as 'Uncontacted Frontier', which contains more uncontacted tribes than anywhere else on earth.

Prosecutor Pablo Luz de Beltrand said the killings took place in the Javari Valley , the second largest indigenous reserve in Brazil.

He said it was difficult to investigate the incident properly as the "tribes are uncontacted" and "even Funai has only scant information about them".

Beltrand said it was the second such incident he was investigating this year. The case of several uncontacted Indians who were killed in February still remains open.

Survivors International, the largest global indigenous rights group, warned that the uncontacted tribes were very small and that the massacre could mean a significant percentage of a remote ethnic group had been wiped out.

Sarah Shenker, a senior campaigner for the group, said: "If the investigation confirms the reports, it will be yet another genocidal massacre resulting directly from the Brazilian government's failure to protect isolated tribes — something that is guaranteed in the Constitution."

Brazilian President Michel Temer has slashed funding for indigenous groups, forcing Funai to close several of its monitoring bases and reduce staffing in others. Three bases have been closed in the Javari Valley, where the tribe members are reported to have been killed.</s>Sao Paulo: They were members of an uncontacted tribe gathering eggs along the river in a remote part of the Amazon. Then, it appears, they had the bad luck of running into gold miners.

Now, federal prosecutors in Brazil have opened an investigation into the reported massacre of about 10 members of the tribe, the latest evidence that threats to endangered indigenous groups are on the rise in the country.

The Brazilian agency on indigenous affairs, Funai, said it had lodged a complaint with the prosecutor's office in the state of Amazonas after the gold miners went to a bar in the town of Tabatinga, near the border with Peru, and bragged about the killings. They brandished a hand-carved paddle that they said had come from the tribe, the agency said.

"It was crude bar talk," said Leila Silvia Burger Sotto-Maior, Funai's coordinator for uncontacted and recently contacted tribes. "They even bragged about cutting up the bodies and throwing them in the river."

The miners, she said, claimed that "they had to kill them or be killed."

Sotto-Maior said the killings were reported to have taken place last month. The indigenous affairs bureau conducted some initial interviews in the town and then took the case to police.

"There is a lot of evidence, but it needs to be proven," she said.

The prosecutor in charge of the case, Pablo Luz de Beltrand, confirmed that an investigation had begun, but said he could not discuss the details of the case while it was underway. He said the episode was alleged to have occurred in the Javari Valley - the second-largest indigenous reserve in Brazil - in the remote west.

"We are following up, but the territories are big and access is limited," Beltrand said. "These tribes are uncontacted - even Funai has only sporadic information about them. So it's difficult work that requires all government departments working together."

Beltrand said it was the second such episode that he was investigating this year. The first reported killing of uncontacted Indians in the region occurred in February, and that case is still open. "It was the first time that we'd had this kind of case in this region," he said in a telephone interview. "It's not something that was happening before."

Survival International, a global indigenous rights group, warned that given the small sizes of the uncontacted Amazon tribes, this latest episode could mean that a significant percentage of a remote ethnic group was wiped out.

"If the investigation confirms the reports, it will be yet another genocidal massacre resulting directly from the Brazilian government's failure to protect isolated tribes - something that is guaranteed in the Constitution," said Sarah Shenker, a senior campaigner with the rights group.

Under Brazil's president, Michel Temer, funding for indigenous affairs has been slashed. In April, Funai closed five of the 19 bases that it uses to monitor and protect isolated tribes, and reduced staffing at others. The bases are used to prevent invasions by loggers and miners and to communicate with recently contacted tribes.

Three of those bases were in the Javari Valley, which is known as the Uncontacted Frontier and is believed to be home to more uncontacted tribes than anywhere else on Earth. About 20 of the 103 uncontacted tribes registered in Brazil are in the Valley.

"We had problems with previous governments, but not like this," said Sotto-Maior, the Funai coordinator. Her agency's budget this year for the uncontacted tribes department was just 2 million reais (about $800,000), down from 7.5 million reais in 2014.

"We are seriously concerned about attacks from mining and agriculture interests," she said. "What can I do with 2 million reais?"

Temer, who is deeply unpopular, has sought support from powerful agricultural, ranching and mining lobbies to push economic changes through Congress and shelter him from a corruption investigation. Last month, the lower house of Congress voted to spare him from standing trial for corruption in the Supreme Court, but only after the president doled out jobs and agreed to a series of concessions, many of which affected long-standing deforestation and land-rights regulations.

A decree by Temer that opened up a large reserve in the Amazon to mining prompted an international outcry. After a judge blocked the decree, the government announced that it would revise its decision, but critics are wary.

With land disputes on the rise in many remote areas of Brazil, indigenous groups, rural workers and land activists have all been targeted by violence. More than 50 people had been killed as of the end of July, compared with 61 in all of 2016, according to the Land Pastoral Commission.

In some cases, government or police agents have been blamed for the violence. Authorities are investigating one police raid in the Amazon region that ended with 10 activists being killed. No officers were injured.

Activists worry that the country's indigenous groups - and especially the uncontacted tribes - are the most vulnerable when it comes to land disputes.

"When their land is protected, they thrive," said Shenker, the rights campaigner. "When their land is invaded, they can be wiped out."</s>“There is a lot of evidence, but it needs to be proven,” she said.

The prosecutor in charge of the case, Pablo Luz de Beltrand, confirmed that an investigation had begun, but said he could not discuss the details of the case while it was underway. He said the episode was alleged to have occurred in the Javari Valley — the second-largest indigenous reserve in Brazil — in the remote west.

“We are following up, but the territories are big and access is limited,” Mr. Beltrand said. “These tribes are uncontacted — even Funai has only sporadic information about them. So it’s difficult work that requires all government departments working together.”

Mr. Beltrand said it was the second such episode that he was investigating this year. The first reported killing of uncontacted Indians in the region occurred in February, and that case is still open. “It was the first time that we’d had this kind of case in this region,” he said in a telephone interview. “It’s not something that was happening before.”

Survival International, a global indigenous rights group, warned that given the small sizes of the uncontacted Amazon tribes, this latest episode could mean that a significant percentage of a remote ethnic group was wiped out.

“If the investigation confirms the reports, it will be yet another genocidal massacre resulting directly from the Brazilian government’s failure to protect isolated tribes — something that is guaranteed in the Constitution,” said Sarah Shenker, a senior campaigner with the rights group.

Under Brazil’s president, Michel Temer, funding for indigenous affairs has been slashed. In April, Funai closed five of the 19 bases that it uses to monitor and protect isolated tribes, and reduced staffing at others. The bases are used to prevent invasions by loggers and miners and to communicate with recently contacted tribes.

Three of those bases were in the Javari Valley, which is known as the Uncontacted Frontier and is believed to be home to more uncontacted tribes than anywhere else on Earth. Approximately 20 of the 103 uncontacted tribes registered in Brazil are in the Valley.

“We had problems with previous governments, but not like this,” said Ms. Sotto-Maior, the Funai coordinator. Her agency’s budget this year for the uncontacted tribes department was just two million reais, or about $650,000, down from 7.5 million reais in 2014.

“We are seriously concerned about attacks from mining and agriculture interests,” she said. “What can I do with two million reais?”

President Temer, who is deeply unpopular, has sought support from powerful agricultural, ranching and mining lobbies to push economic changes through Congress and shelter him from a corruption investigation. Last month, the lower house of Congress voted to spare him from standing trial for corruption in the Supreme Court, but only after the president doled out jobs and agreed to a series of concessions, many of which affected longstanding deforestation and land-rights regulations.

A decree by Mr. Temer that opened up a large reserve in the Amazon to mining prompted an international outcry. After a judge blocked the decree, the government announced that it would revise its decision, but critics are wary.

With land disputes on the rise in many remote areas of Brazil, indigenous groups, rural workers and land activists have all been targeted by violence. More than 50 people had been killed as of the end of July, compared with 61 in all of 2016, according to the Land Pastoral Commission.

In some cases, government or police agents have been blamed for the violence. The authorities are investigating one police raid in the Amazon region that ended with 10 activists being killed. No officers were injured.

Activists worry that the country’s indigenous groups — and especially the uncontacted tribes — are the most vulnerable when it comes to land disputes.

“When their land is protected, they thrive,” said Ms. Shenker, the rights campaigner. “When their land is invaded, they can be wiped out.”</s>RIO DE JANEIRO — A federal prosecutor in Brazil’s Amazonas state has launched an investigation into a reported massacre of at least 10 members of an “uncontacted” indigenous tribe by gold miners.

Brazil's indigenous affairs agency, Funai, released a statement confirming that there is an investigation into the murder which allegedly took place along the Jandiatuba river, near Peru’s border.

"There is an ongoing inquiry into the case but I cannot speak about its content in order to not prejudice the investigation,” federal prosecutor Pablo Beltrand told Reuters.

If confirmed, the murders would be one of the largest massacres of ingenious people in Brazil since 16 Yanomami indigenous people were killed in 1993.

Funai officials in Amazonas received an audio clip with miners bragging about the crime, said Gustavo Souza, acting coordinator of Funai’s ethno-environmental protection front at Vale do Javari, where the murders allegedly took place.

Souza said he heard miners in the recording saying there were women and children on the river bank and they shot them.

“In the audio, one of the miners said ‘you know, I do not mistake a shot’,” Souza said. He said he also saw a picture of a hand-crafted paddle that reportedly belonged to the indigenous tribe.

“Indigenous lands are at risk amid increasing invasions and we’re afraid that it’ll get worse from now on."

The number of invasions in indigenous lands in Vale do Javari has been increasing amid budget cuts — part of austerity measures aimed at lifting Brazil out of its worst recession in decades.

Souza said although Vale do Javari is one of the largest indigenous reserves in the country, it is patrolled by just 10 Funai officials who are charged with monitoring the largest number of "uncontacted" indigenous people worldwide.

Endangered indigenous tribes are increasingly facing threats from miners in the Amazon rainforest amid government budget cuts to the Brazilian agency responsible for protecting them, local officials and activists say.

Carla de Lello Lorenzi, spokeswoman at indigenous rights group Survival International, said the cuts put indigenous lives at risk.

“These tribes are completely vulnerable. If miners and loggers get into their land, they are very vulnerable to violence and diseases,” Lorenzi said.
Brazil is to investigate the supposed murder of ten members of an Amazonian tribe in the Javari Valley.