February 3, 2023
photo: Ettore Chiereguini / AGIF.
Brazilian authorities have received allegations that at least 30 Yanomami indigenous girls and adolescents have become pregnant in the Amazonian state of Roraima after being raped by illegal miners, who sow terror in Brazil’s largest reserve.
The government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva announced Friday that it will investigate the case.
The complaint was made to the Executive on Monday by the Indigenous Council of Roraima (CIR) and revealed by the National Secretary for the Rights of Children and Adolescents, Ariel de Castro.
“We ask for more information from the CIR so that we have the names of the girls and ask the Civil Police of Roraima, the Federal Police and the Federal Public Ministry to investigate possible violations of vulnerable people,” Castro informed the press.
Brazilian authorities declared a state of health emergency in the Yanomami Indigenous Territory, a huge reserve in northern Brazil, bordering Venezuela, in the face of worsening problems caused by the presence of more than 20,000 illegal miners in search of gold, leaving contaminated rivers and causing the spread of diseases such as malaria.
Numerous allegations
There are numerous reports of sexual abuse and other human rights crimes committed by the miners among the more than 27,000 indigenous people living in the reserve.
Their defenseless situation worsened greatly during the mandate of the ultra-right-wing Jair Bolsonaro, who came to power in 2018 with a position in favor of commercial exploitation of protected areas in the Amazon and with the promise of demarcating “not one more centimeter” of land for the indigenous people.
Last year a report entitled ‘Yanomami under attack: illegal mining in Yanomami Indigenous Land and proposals to combat it’, published by the Yanomami Hutukara Association, denounced that miners demand sex with women and girls in exchange for food.
After the magnitude of the humanitarian crisis of the Yanomami was revealed two weeks ago, the Federal Police and the Judiciary decided to investigate Bolsonaro for “genocide” and omission in the health response to the indigenous people. The states of Roraima and Amazonas, which territoriality share the reserve, and the municipal government are also being investigated for the situation of abandonment in which these traditional peoples live.
“Our mission is to investigate the gaps in public policies to protect indigenous peoples. We are verifying, in addition to the causes of infant mortality, 570 deaths of children from preventable causes in the last four years,” said Castro.
He added that they are also investigating “possible illegal adoptions of indigenous children, sexual abuse, child sexual exploitation, failures in the health care of pregnant women and children, and in the fight against malnutrition of indigenous children in their early childhood”.
Source: Cuba en Resumen