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Brazilian The health ministry declared a medical emergency in the Yanomami region, the country’s largest indigenous reservation on the border with Venezuela, after reports of children dying from malnutrition and other illnesses caused by illegal gold mining.
The new government of incoming President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva issued a decree on Friday that it said was aimed at reviving the Yanomami medical services that Jair Bolsonaro abolished.
During the four years of Bolsonaro’s presidency, 570 Yanomami children died from curable diseases, mainly malnutrition, but also malaria, diarrhea and feral cats, the Amazon news platform Sumauma reported, citing data obtained by FOIA. Deformities caused by mercury use by gold miners.
Lula visited the Yanomami Health Center in Boavista, Roraima, on Saturday after photos showed children and the elderly with noticeably thinner ribs.
Lula tweeted: “What I see in Roraima is not just a humanitarian crisis, but a genocide: a premeditated crime against the Yanomami, led by a man insensitive to suffering.” committed by the government.”
The government announced that food parcels would be airlifted to the reservation where some 26,000 Yanoma people live, in an area of ​​rainforest and savannah the size of Portugal.
The reservation has been invaded by illegal gold miners for decades, but the incursions have multiplied since Bolsonaro took office in 2018, promising to allow mining on previously protected land and offering concessions. Wildcat mining legalized.
There are also signs that organized crime has been involved. In the latest violence, men on speedboats on the river opened fire with automatic weapons on Aboriginal villages where the community objected to gold miners entering.
Estevao Senra, a researcher at the Instituto Socioambiental, an NGO that defends indigenous rights, said some gold miners had already started leaving, fearful of enforcement actions by Lula’s government, and appeared to be crossing the border into neighboring Guyana and Suriname.
Lula said the new government would end illegal gold mining to combat illegal deforestation in the Amazon, which has soared to a 15-year high under Bolsonaro.
“We must hold the previous government accountable for making this worse so that we found adults who weighed like children and children who were skinny,” said Sonia Gua, the first indigenous woman to be a cabinet minister. A new Ministry of Indigenous Affairs, said Sonia Guajajara.
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