Indian Mission Council draws a sad balance

The situation of the approximately 235 Indian peoples of Brazil is desperate: loss of land, violence, slave-like working conditions, threats and murder mark their everyday life still in the year 2007 according to a balance drawn up by the Indian Mission Council of the Brazilian Bishops’ Conference (CIMI).

„Anyone raising their voice for example against illegal timber-felling risks their life”, says Yvonne Bangert, correspondent of the Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) in Göttingen. „So the spokesperson of the Surui Indians from the federal state of Rondonia, Almir Surui, who was the guest at our human rights organisation in February, received death threats on her return from Germany. We are very worried for her safety.” The GfbV has for many years been a partner organisation of the CIMI and publishes the annual balance of the Mission Council on the human rights of the Indians.

The CIMI reports that the native people are confronted everywhere in Brazil with the destruction of the environment, suicide, high infant mortality rates and the lack of medical care. The sad record is held by the federal state of Mato Grosso do Sul. Here the murder rate rose between 2006 and 2007 by 99 percent from 27 to 53. As a result of the extreme lack of land many communities of the Guarani, who number in all some 40,000, live beside the roads between large plantations of sugar-cane, soya and maize and also pastureland for cattle. 95 percent of the forest has already disappeared in this federal state. With the boom in the demand for the biofuel ethanol, which is obtained from sugar-cane, the plantations are steadily expanding.

Most of the Guarani have no chance of supporting themselves on the remaining land. Frustration and violence are also rife in the communities. And the jobs in the sugar-cane factories are not an alternative. They are poorly paid and the working conditions are miserable. In March and November 2007 controllers from the Ministry of Labour released more than 1,100 Guarani-Kaiowa and Terena from the most shameful conditions in sugar-cane factories in Mato Grosso do Sul.

„Lula da Silva has now been in office for six years and the majority of the indigenous peoples of Brazil are standing with their backs to the wall”, is the judgement of Yvonne Bangert. „The Yanomami are now faced with the return of malaria and the gold-diggers. The number of dam-building projects has risen to such an extent that whole eco-systems are changing and the very means of existence of thousands of Indians is being destroyed. Examples of these are the diversion of the Rio Sao Francisco in north-east Brazil, the planned dams of San Antonio and Jirau on the Rio Madeira in Rondonia and the plan for the construction of the Belo Monte Dam on the River Xingu.”

CIMI is one of the most important human rights organisations for the support of the indigenous peoples of Brazil and it has people working for it in the Indian communities themselves. CIMI presented its report „Violence against the indigenous peoples in Brazil 2006-2007” on 10th April at the 46th annual general meeting of the Brazilian Bishops’ Conference.