<
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/09/lula-brazil-indigenous-illegal-miners-yanomami>
"The Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has insisted his
government must not lose the “war” against the environmental criminals
devastating Indigenous lands in the Amazon after claims that thousands of
illegal miners were resisting eviction from the country’s biggest such
territory.
After taking power last January, Lula made expelling an estimated 20,000 gold
and tin ore prospectors from the Yanomami Indigenous territory a top priority
after four years of Amazon destruction under his far-right predecessor, Jair
Bolsonaro. Environmental special forces and federal police teams were sent deep
into the region’s remote jungles as part of a supposedly historic crackdown.
At first those high-risk airborne operations bore fruit but in recent months
they have been dramatically scaled back. Speaking last month, the veteran
Yanomami leader Davi Kopenawa claimed thousands of miners were again causing
havoc in his people’s mountainous, Portugal-sized territory. “Mother Earth is
angry,” Kopenawa told the Guardian, urging Lula to re-escalate an anti-mining
campaign critics say has been allowed to fade.
On Tuesday, almost a year after his Yanomami crackdown started, Lula summoned
more than a dozen top ministers, as well as military and federal police chiefs,
to review their progress in dislodging miners blamed for a surge in child
mortality and diseases such as malaria.
“This meeting is about deciding – once and for all – what our government’s
going to do to make sure Indigenous Brazilians no longer fall victim to
massacres, hooliganism, mining, and to people who want to invade preserved
areas that belong to the Indigenous people and cannot be used [by outsiders],”
Lula told his cabinet, vowing to tackle the Yanomami crisis with “the full
force of the government machine”.
“We cannot lose a war to illegal miners, we cannot lose a war to illegal
loggers [and] we cannot lose a war to people who are breaking the law,” Lula
added."
Via
Future Crunch:
<
https://futurecrunch.com/good-news-malaria-vaccine-reforestation-china-poverty-india/>
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
