Reports point to 30 cases of young Yanomami pregnant by prospectors

Reports show that at least 30 Yanomami girls and teenagers are pregnant, victims of abuse committed by miners in Roraima, informed the National Secretary for the Rights of Children and Adolescents, Ariel de Castro. Castro said that the reports were presented by the Indigenous Council of Roraima (CIR) in a meeting with a delegation from the federal government, last Monday (30), at the headquarters of the Special Yanomami District of Roraima. Representatives of the National Foundation for Indigenous Peoples (Funai) and the Ministry of Health’s Emergency Operations Coordination also attended the meeting and are monitoring the cases. “We asked the CIR for more information so that we have the names of the young women and request investigations of possible rapes of vulnerable people for the Civil Police of Roraima, the Federal Police and the Federal Public Ministry”, informed Castro. Ariel de Castro also said that there are reports of six suspected cases of irregular sheltering of Yanomami children, and in two cases, adoption processes are allegedly in progress by non-Yanomami families. “The CIR and Hutukara entities reported that arbitrary acts and irregularities were taking place. We are waiting for the lawyers of the entities to forward us a greater detail of the cases.” According to Castro, the organizations’ reports show that the federal, state and municipal governments have neglected to protect and provide assistance to indigenous peoples in the region in recent years, including vaccinating children and distributing food. “Our mission is to investigate gaps in public policies to protect indigenous people. We are verifying, in addition to the causes of infant mortality, 570 deaths of children from preventable causes in the last four years, but also possible illegal adoptions of indigenous children, irregular reception of children in shelters, sexual abuse, child sexual exploitation, failures in health care of pregnant women, children and coping with malnutrition of indigenous children in their early childhood”, he said. Humanitarian crisis The Yanomami communities are experiencing a serious humanitarian crisis. According to the federal government, at least 570 children from the Yanomami Indigenous Land have died in four years. Denounced by indigenous leaders and indigenous organizations for years, the situation mobilized public opinion after the press released, in mid-January, new images of visibly malnourished Yanomami adults and children, many with malaria, waiting for medical assistance in the indigenous land or crowding the Casa de Saúde Indígena (Casai) in Boa Vista, where indigenous people who need hospital care for malaria, acute respiratory infections and other diseases for which there are no medicines at the base poles are taken. Five days after sending technical teams to Roraima to carry out a diagnosis of the health situation of the approximately 30,400 inhabitants of the Yanomami Indigenous Land, the Ministry of Health declared a Public Health Emergency of National Importance. It also created the Public Health Emergency Operations Center (COE-Y), responsible for coordinating the measures to be implemented, including the distribution of resources for the restoration of services and articulation with state and municipal managers of the Unified Health System. (SUS).

Agência Brasil