Indigenous leader shot in northeastern Pará

The Civil Police of Pará is investigating the alleged attack against one of the main leaders of the Ture-Mariquita village, located in the city of Tomé-Acú, in Pará. Chief Lúcio Gusmão Tembé was shot at dawn this Sunday (14) and is hospitalized at the Metropolitan Hospital of Urgency and Emergency (HMUE), in Belém (PA). The case is investigated by the Quatro Bocas police station, a municipality about 200 kilometers from Tomé-Açú – which is the same distance from the capital, Belém. According to the state secretariat for Public Security and Social Defense (Segup), investigators have already been to the crime scene and collected evidence that may help identify those involved and elucidate the case. According to the testimony of indigenous witnesses, Lúcio was returning to the village when the car he was traveling in got stuck. When getting out of the vehicle to try to free it, the chief was approached by two men on a motorcycle. One of the bikers pulled out a firearm and fired at Lucio, hitting him in the face. Consulted by the report, the state secretary of Public Health of Pará (Sespa) confirmed that the indigenous man remained hospitalized until 12:30 pm today (15), but informed that Lúcio’s family did not authorize the disclosure of details about his state of health. Legal adviser to the Indigenous Missionary Council (Cimi), an organization linked to the National Conference of Bishops of Brazil (CNBB), anthropologist Vinícius Brito da Silva Machado told Agência Brasil that Lúcio’s life is not in danger, despite having lost a lot of blood and that the projectile was still lodged in his face. According to Machado, the indigenous community demands that the authorities clarify the facts. “We presume that what happened was an attempted execution. The two bikers arrived when Lúcio and two people from the community who were traveling with him were trying to free the car and shot Lúcio at close range. They took nothing; they said nothing and wore masks [cobrindo os rostos]”, added the legal advisor, assuring that Lúcio and other indigenous and quilombola leaders in the region had already reported to federal and state authorities that they had been receiving successive death threats. Also according to Machado, the attack against the Tembé leader is part of a context of intense conflicts involving indigenous, quilombola and riverside communities and companies that produce palm oil, accused of encroaching on Union territory destined for exclusive indigenous use and impacting the environment through the use of pesticides in plantations and the irregular disposal of waste from palm oil production. In September of last year, three Turiwara people were injured during an ambush near the city of Acará, in the same northeast region of Pará. A non-indigenous person, Clebson Barra Portilho, died at the time. According to the reports, Portilho was driving the truck in which the three indigenous people were returning to the Ramal Braço Grande community, located between the cities of Tomé-Açú and Acará and close to the Turé-Mariquita Indigenous Land. Homologated in 1991, the Turé-Mariquita indigenous area has just over 146 hectares (each hectare corresponds to the approximate measurements of an official soccer field).

Agência Brasil