Brazil: Illegal gold miners fatally shot in Indigenous territory
According to the government, gunfire killed four after miners ambushed police and environmental officers on Yanomami land.
Illegal prospectors ambushed Brazilian police and environmental protection agents on vast indigenous territory in the Amazon rainforest, and four miners were shot dead in a shootout, the government said.
The environment ministry said Monday its team was attacked a day earlier when they moved to dismantle a wild mining camp run by an organized crime gang on the Yanomami reserve.
The ministry said in a rack that the Brazilian Federal Police are investigating the incident, which took place after an attack on Saturday killed a man and seriously injured two others in Yanomami area.
The violence comes after the government of Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva resumed raids earlier this year to illegal miners who invaded the largest indigenous reserve in the South American country.
For years, indigenous leaders had called for more protection to defend their communities against the illegal miners, accusing them of sowing violence.
A report from the Hutukara Yanomami Association last year found that the area marked by “garimpo,” or wild gold mining, in the Yanomami Reserve has increased by 46 percent to 3,272 hectares (8,085 acres) by 2021 – the largest annual increase since monitoring started in 2018.
“In addition to the deforestation of our land and the destruction of our waters, the illegal mining for gold and cassiterite [a key tin ingredient] in Yanomami territory has led to an explosion of malaria and other infectious diseases… and a terrifying wave of violence against indigenous peoples,” the group said.
More than 20,000 miners are believed to have occupied the vast Yanomami Reserve, which is the size of Portugal and spans the states of Roraima and Amazonas in the northwestern corner of the Brazilian Amazon.
The country’s former far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, promoted more development in the Amazon as his government weakened Brazil’s environmental protection and indigenous rights agencies.
The Yanomami, estimated to number about 28,000, have said Bolsonaro’s policies have contributed to increased threats against them.
According to Indigenous Peoples Minister Sonia Guajajara, about 80 percent of the prospectors who invaded the reserve have since been evicted, and those who remain resist removal more violently.
In Monday’s statement, the environment ministry said 327 mining camps had been dismantled, while 18 aircraft, a helicopter and dozens of ships had been destroyed in the operation to clear Yanomami territory.
President Lula has pledged zero tolerance for mining on indigenous lands protected by Brazil’s constitution.
The Ministry of the Environment, meanwhile, is also planning clearance operations in five other reserves where illegal logging and mining increased under Bolsonaro.