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| The Waiapi people inhabit territory rich in minerals and deep inside the Amazon that's seen as desirable by miners (AFP Photo/Apu Gomes) |
Rio de Janeiro (AFP) - Brazil deployed police to a remote Amazon village on Sunday after reports it had been overrun by armed miners following the murder of an indigenous leader, officials and tribal chiefs said.
The
violence in an area of the northern Amapa state controlled by the Waiapi tribe
comes as Brazil's indigenous people face growing pressures from miners,
ranchers and loggers under pro-business President Jair Bolsonaro, who on
Saturday called for the "first world" to help exploit the
"absurd quantity of minerals" in the Amazon rainforest.
Last
Monday, a Waiapi indigenous leader was killed and his body found the following
day in a river, the Amapa attorney general's office (AGO) said in a statement.
While none
of the Waiapi witnessed the "violent" killing, a council of village
chiefs said on Facebook a search of the area found "trails and other signs
that the death was caused by non-indigenous people."
On Friday,
a group of "armed non-indigenous" overran the nearby village of
Yvytoto, prompting residents to flee, the council said. Local media called them
"garimpeiros," a term for armed miners active in the Amazon, and said
they numbered 50.
After
reports of the attacks emerged Saturday, members of the federal police and a
military police special forces unit were dispatched, the AGO said, arriving in
the village some 300 kilometers (186 miles) from the state capital Macapa on
Sunday.
The
indigenous affairs agency FUNAI said its officers were also on the ground
monitoring the police investigation.
"Law
enforcement officials have reported that no hypothesis for the murder has been
ruled out, nor can they can say at this time who carried out the crime,"
the AGO said, as it announced the establishment of a crisis management group to
oversee the investigation.
"The
alleged presence of garimpeiros and other groups in the region is being
investigated."
'Environmental psychosis'
Rich in
gold, manganese, iron and copper, the Waiapi's territory is deep inside the
Amazon, making communication difficult, police said.
The Waiapi
council said some of the tribe's fighters had stationed themselves near the
village occupied by the miners.
"The
situation is urgent," said Randolfe Rodrigues, an opposition senator from
Amapa, on his official Facebook page.
The
Brazilian Bar Association issued a statement calling on the government to
protect the Waiapi's land and ensure perpetrators of criminal offenses were
"punished."
The tribe's
territory is one of hundreds Brazil's government demarcated in the 1980s for
the exclusive use of its 800,000 indigenous inhabitants. Access by outsiders is
strictly regulated.
Since
taking office in January, Bolsonaro has been accused of harming the Amazon and
indigenous tribes in order to benefit his supporters in the logging, mining and
farming industries.
"We
are experiencing a real environmental psychosis," Bolsonaro said recently.
He's also
pledged to crackdown on what he's called radical environmental activism, and
also questioned the latest official figures showing deforestation increasing by
88 percent in June compared with the same period last year.
