The Brazilian police have opened an investigation for “genocide” after the publication of official data reporting the death in 2022 of a hundred children under the age of five in the Yanomami indigenous territory, the Minister of Justice announced on Tuesday.
“Yesterday I decided to open a new police investigation into a possible genocide” in this territory, minister Flavio Dino told CNN Brazil.
“We believe that there are very strong indications of a denial of food and health assistance to these indigenous populations,” he added.
“Inhuman” scenes
The investigation, which targets public officials and health sector officials in the indigenous territory, will also focus on allegations of environmental crimes and embezzlement of public resources.
The Ministry of Health announced last week the death in this isolated territory in the middle of the virgin jungle in 2022 of 99 children under five years of age. Among the causes of death, pneumonia, diarrhea and gastroenteritis, probably of infectious origin, as well as hemorrhage or severe malnutrition.
The president of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, inaugurated on January 1, went on Saturday to Boa Vista, in the state of Roraima, in the north of the country, where part of the Yanomami territory is located.
“What I saw shocked me,” he said, referring to “inhuman” scenes when reporting on his visit.
Lands meant to be inviolate
Some 30,400 indigenous people live on Yanomami lands, straddling the states of Roraima and Amazonas, but also in part of neighboring Venezuela.
The populations of these lands, supposedly inviolable and where all mining is prohibited, face difficulties to feed themselves due to the destruction of the tropical forest where they normally find their livelihoods.
According to the Yanomami chiefs, some 20,000 illegal gold prospectors have invaded their territory, killing indigenous people, sexually abusing women and adolescents, and contaminating their rivers with the mercury that separates gold from sediment.
The authorities found “a very precarious care structure” on Yanomami land, said the Minister of Justice.
Source: BFM TV
