The Ministry of Health of Brazil declared a medical emergency on Yanomami territory, the largest indigenous reserve in the country and border with Venezuela, after reports of children dying of malnutrition and other diseases caused by illegal gold mining.
A decree published on Friday by the government of the president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva He said the goal of the declaration was to restore health services for the Yanomami people that had been dismantled by his far-right predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro.
In the four years of the Bolsonaro presidency570 Yanomami children died of treatable diseases, mainly malnutrition, but also malaria, diarrhea and malformations caused by mercury used by illegal gold miners, the local news platform Sumauma reported, citing data obtained by a FOIA.
Lula visited on Saturday a Yanomami health center in Boa Vista, in the state of Roraimaafter the publication of photos that showed children and the elderly, men and women, so thin that their ribs were visible.
“More than a humanitarian crisis, what I saw in Roraima was a genocide: a premeditated crime against the Yanomami, committed by a government insensitive to suffering,” Lula said.
The government announced that food packages will be sent to the reserve where some 26,000 yanomamis live in a region of tropical rainforest and savannah the size of Portugal.
The reserve has been invaded by illegal gold miners for decades, but raids have multiplied since Bolsonaro took office in 2018 vowing to allow mining on previously protected land and offering to legalize the activity.
There are also signs that organized crime has gotten involved. In recent violent incidents, men in speedboats on rivers have fired automatic weapons at indigenous peoples whose communities oppose the entry of gold miners.
Some gold miners have started to leave out of fear of police operations by the Lula government, and appear to be crossing the border into neighboring Guyana and Suriname, said Estevao Senra, a researcher at the Socio-Environmental Institute, an NGO that defends indigenous rights. .
Lula said the new government will end illegal gold mining while cracking down on illegal deforestation in the Amazon, which reached its highest point in 15 years under Bolsonaro’s government.
“We must hold the previous government accountable for allowing this situation to worsen to the point of finding adults who weigh like children and children reduced to skin and bones,” said Sonia Guajajara, the first indigenous woman to be a cabinet minister, heading a new Ministry of Indigenous Affairs.
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