In the Yanomami Indigenous Land (TI), covering 9.6 million hectares, the way in which mining impacts communities has been denounced for decades, both by leaders and by independent and local journalism vehicles. The Yanomami are a people that constantly remember one of the most striking and extreme events of violation of rights, known as Massacre de Haximu. This was the first case recognized by the Brazilian Justice as a crime of genocide. The massacre took place in August 1993. The conflict began when illegal prospectors from the Upper Orinoco broke an agreement reached with the Yanomami who lived in a mountainous region on the border between Brazil and Venezuela. On June 15, seven miners invited six indigenous people to hunt and executed four of them along the way. In retaliation, the Yanomami murdered one of the garimpeiros. A little over a month passed, and on July 23, a group of miners invaded the village, where some Yanomami were – mostly women and children – and killed 12 Yanomami with guns and machetes. The victims were a man, a woman, three teenagers, two elderly women, four children and a baby. In 2022, it will be 30 years since TI’s approval, amidst problems that still have no definitive solution. According to the Indigenous Missionary Council (Cimi), in June, the community of Xihopi held a celebration to mark the date, but also took advantage of the occasion to share reports of episodes of violence caused, even today, by miners. Altogether, it is estimated that there are currently around 20,000 garimpeiros in the TI. Eight months earlier, on October 13, 2021, leaders of the Macuxi Yano community, in the Parima River region, communicated to the Hutukara Associação Yanomami (HAY) the disappearance of two children, aged 5 and 7, while playing in the water, near a a mining raft. A team from the Fire Department began the search immediately and, on the same day, found the younger boy’s body. The next day, the corporation located the second child, also lifeless. In April 2022, another tragedy devastated the Yanomami people. Mourning was now taking place over the loss of a 12-year-old girl, raped and killed by miners, in the community of Aracaçá, which is located in the Waiakás region, in the state of Roraima. The region is one of the most impacted by mining. Malaria and food insecurity On site, they compete with hunger, malaria and mercury contamination. In response, the Ministry of Health declared a Public Health Emergency of National Importance (Espin) and installed the Public Health Emergency Operations Center (COE – Yanomami). Threats to food security, specifically, were even on the radar of the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) in October 2019, which warned of the hunger of Yanomami children. At the time, it was estimated that, among the village population, eight out of ten children under 5 years old suffered from chronic malnutrition, a condition that could irreversibly compromise mental, motor and cognitive development or even lead to death. Since images of malnourished Yanomami surfaced, debates have also been raised, including the need to follow a certain disclosure protocol, in order to respect the memory of the victims of the socio-environmental crisis that is tearing the territory apart.
Agência Brasil
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