Brazil’s National Indian
Foundation disputes the figures presented
in an Amnesty International report about assassinations of Indians
in Brazil. The Funai call the report fallacious and acknowledges
only five murders caused by land disputes. The Indian Foundation
also accuses Amnesty of basing its conclusion on unreliable sources.
by: Luciana
Vasconcelos
Interruptions in the process of demarcating Indian territories are the major
cause of violence practiced against Indians in Brazil, according to a report
released on May 27 by Amnesty International, which reports 23 assassinations
resulting from land disputes in 2003.
The Funai (Fundação
Nacional do ÍndioNational Indian Foundation) and the Cimi (Conselho
Missionário IndígenaIndigenous Missionary Council) agree
with the diagnosis, but not with the number of Indians killed.
The Funai’s press office
informed that the figures presented in the Amnesty International report are
fallacious. The Foundation acknowledges only five murders caused by land disputes
and says that the Amnesty report lacks reliable sources.
The Cimi is one of the
organizations responsible for the data included in the Amnesty report. The
vice-president of the Commission, Saulo Feitosa, questioned the Funai’s argument
and disclosed that the number provided by the Cimi to Amnesty is larger: 31
deaths as a result of land disputes in 2003. "We back the number in the
Amnesty report, because, of the 31 we denounced, some are still missing and
cannot be classified as dead," he said.
350 Prospectors Disappeared
The Prospectors Union
of the state of Rondônia, in northern Brazil, appeared before the Chamber
of Deputies, in Brasília, on May 28, to denounce the disappearance
of 350 prospectors on the Roosevelt Reserve, where a recent dispute between
Cinta-Larga Indians and prospectors resulted in 29 deaths. According to union
president Paulo Roberto Borges, the government must act quickly to prevent
more deaths.
District Court Judge Leonel
Pereira da Rocha told the hearing in the Chamber that 65 deaths on the reserve
have been registered since 2001 and there are reports of a clandestine cemetery
where 100 corpses are buried.
According to the judge,
local courts have had difficulties in executing arrest warrants and interrogating
Indians who live in the reserve. In his opinion, the National Indian Foundation
(Funai) has gotten in the way of investigations.
Rocha calls for federal
government intervention on the reserve. He claims that the Cinta-Larga Indians
on the Roosevelt Indian Reserve are heavily armed. "As long as the Indians
continue to be armed, the conflicts will continue," he affirmed.
Deputy Miguel de Souza,
from the state of Roraima, filed a formal motion in the Chamber to form a
Parliamentary Investigation Commission (CPI) to look into the matter and got
the president of the Chamber, João Paulo Cunha, from São Paulo,
to agree to the creation of a special Commission to analyze all projects dealing
with the Indian question in the Chamber.
The Funai, the Environmental
Protection Agency (Ibama) and the Federal Police are moving into action in
a Caiapós Indian reservation area near São Felix do Xingu, in
the state of Pará. The objective of the joint operation is to remove
gold prospectors from the Indian area.
The regional director
of the Funai, Megaron Txukarramãe, says that the Caiapós are
irritated by the presence of the prospectors and that there may be conflict
although an attempt to resolve the problem peacefully is underway. "This
is not good for the prospectors, it is not good for us, so it is best for
them to leave and not come back," he said.
There have been reports
of prospectors in the area since January. A prospector camp was sighted on
May 28 by a Funai-Federal Police helicopter, along with airstrips used by
the invaders. Txukarramâe says he will ask the police to bomb the airstrip
so it can no longer be used.
The Caiapós reservation
dates from 1992. It is inhabited by some 4,000 Indians.
Torture and Justice
In a related subject,
Minister Nilmário Miranda, of the Special Secretariat for Human Rights,
declared in an official note that there is a growing number of court convictions,
trials, and investigations involving police and government officials accused
of committing the crime of torture.
"There are currently
240 people convicted by lower courts in Brazil of crimes of torture,"
he informed. In his opinion this is already an indication that the Brazilian
judicial system is not unresponsive to the phenomenon.
The note was in response
to a report issued in London by Amnesty International, condemning the existence
of torture, assassinations committed by police, and violence against rural
workers and Indians in Brazil.
The Minister admitted
there is still a long way to go, but he argues that significant progress has
been made in recent years. "The federalization of crimes against human
rights, a measure in the Judicial Reform that gives federal courts jurisdiction
to try and judge crimes against human rights, is already a victory,"
he said.
Another important item,
in his opinion, is the homologation (final approval) of 82 percent of Indian
territories in Brazil over the years. "In the year and a half since this
Administration took office, 33 territories were homologated," he recalled.
Another measure that the
federal government plans to adopt by 2006, through the Special Secretariat
for Human Rights, is the Police Auditors program, in partnership with the
European Community, which will contribute US$ 6.35 million (20 million reais)
to the project.
The Auditors Offices are
available for citizens to denounce crimes. The purpose of the project is the
perfection of external mechanisms to control police violence by strengthening
and disseminating the work done by Auditors Offices throughout Brazil.
Amnesty International
considers the Disarmament Statute edited by the government to control the
possession and sale of small arms a first step in the campaign against violence.
Luciana Vasconcelos works for Agência Brasil (AB), the official press
agency of the Brazilian government. Comments are welcome at lia@radiobras.gov.br.
Translated
from the Portuguese by David Silberstein.