A Campaign to Save Brazilian Indians from Genocide

The Guarani Kaiowá face brutal violence and the theft of their ancestral land, and suffer from the highest suicide rate in the world.
© Fiona Watson/Survival Survival International, a human rights organization that fights for tribal peoples, has launched a campaign to prevent the annihilation of tribal peoples in Brazil to coincide with the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio.

Today is Brazil’s “Day of the Indian,” highlighting indigenous causes and culture across the country.

Despite the political chaos currently engulfing Brazil, the campaign aims to bring attention to serious human rights issues and threats facing the country’s indigenous people. These threats persist regardless of the political turmoil in the country.

The campaign “Stop Brazil’s Genocide,” focuses on protecting uncontacted tribes of the Amazon such as the Kawahiva people, ending violence and land theft directed against the Guarani Indians in southern Brazil and stopping PEC 215, a proposed constitutional amendment which would seriously undermine indigenous land rights and spell disaster for tribes nationwide.

For decades, Survival has campaigned on behalf of uncontacted tribes – of which there are estimated to be more than 100 in Brazil. They are the most vulnerable societies on the planet. Peoples like the Kawahiva are being wiped out by violence from outsiders who steal their land and resources, and by diseases like flu and measles to which they have no resistance.

In southern Brazil, ranchers have devastated the territory of the Guarani people, and nearly all of their land has been stolen. Guarani children starve and their leaders are being assassinated by ranchers’ gunmen, one by one. Hundreds of Guarani men, women and children have committed suicide.

The Guarani Kaiowá face brutal violence and the theft of their ancestral land, and suffer from the highest suicide rate in the world.
© Fiona Watson/Survival

Finally, PEC 215 would, if implemented, give landowners the chance to block the recognition of new indigenous territories, and could enable them to break up existing ones. As tribes depend on land for their very survival, this would pose an existential threat to many peoples, fatally undermining their human rights.

Survival is arguing that collectively, these causes comprise a genocidal threat to tribal peoples in Brazil which must be stopped.

Survival’s Director, Stephen Corry, said: “Tribal peoples have been steadily annihilated across the Americas for centuries. That has to end. Instead of looking at tribes as inconvenient obstacles to “progress,” Brazil must recognize that they are an intrinsic part of its modern nation, and deserve to have their land rights protected so they can survive and thrive.

Political crisis or not, these are crucial issues which must be taken seriously. All eyes are on Brazil as it prepares to host the Olympics, and it’s up to Brazilians to make sure history looks back at their generation favorably.”

Tags:

You May Also Like

Change or I’ll Live, Chávez Tells Brazil and Mercosur

Venezuela is interested in becoming a member of a “new Mercosur,” but if there’s ...

LETTERS

Pleasure Principle By Brazzil Magazine The article by Kathleen de Azevedo in your January ...

Brazil Threatens to Expel NGOs and Foreigners from the Amazon

The Brazilian government is drafting a law asserting sovereignty over the often lawless Amazon ...

Carandiru Massacre’s Author Killed Out of Jealousy, Say Brazilian Police

The Brazilian police have concluded that colonel Ubiratan Guimarães, the man responsible for the ...

President Sarney Might Have Been Brazil’s Mandela. But He Opted for Politics

Every politician has one instinct for power and another for history. Desiring political strength ...

Brazil's Gilberto Gil, singer, composer, Brazilian Culture Minister

See and Hear Brazil’s Gilberto Gil in the US Before He Retires

Tickets are still available for Gilberto Gil's one-night-only gig at Carnegie Hall on March ...

Textile Production Falls in Brazil. Chinese Are Blamed.

Between January and April of this year, the São Paulo, Brazil, textile industry produced ...

A Fair in Brazil Shows the Amazon Is Not Untouchable

Amazontech 2006, an international fair promoted in a different state of the Legal Amazon ...

Brazil’s TAM Airlines Reelects Two Women as Chairman of the Board and Chairman

TAM S.A., Brazil’s largest airline company, reelected the members of its Board of Directors ...

Brazil Slashes Minimum Foreign Investment to US$ 50,000 or Less

The Brazilian government reduced the minimum amount necessary for the authorisation of foreign investments ...