Covid-19 in Brazil

Leading umbrella and support organizations of the indigenous communities in Brazil have published a list demands, calling for more effective protection against Covid-19. They demand that the Brazilian government provide health stations in indigenous areas – with more protective masks, virus test kits, and hygiene products, as well as hospital beds for the seriously ill. The police forces and authorities should finally ensure that illegal goldminers are expelled from indigenous areas and that the crisis is not used as a pretext for further invasions.

According to the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP), the desperate call for help was signed by the country's twenty most important indigenous peoples' organizations – including APIB, COIAB, CIMI, ISA, and Greenpeace Brazil. "Brazil's indigenous peoples are fighting for their survival in the coronavirus crisis. For Covid-19 exacerbates their already dramatic situation, which is characterized by disenfranchisement and marginalization. The government under President Jair Bolsonaro shows little interest in protecting the indigenous peoples from the pandemic," stated Ulrich Delius, the STP's Director, in Göttingen on Wednesday. Bolsonaro has often enough made it clear that he is more interested in access to indigenous land and its resources than in protecting indigenous life.

The organizations are still demanding the authorities to establish a crisis management team to protect the indigenous communities from the pandemic, emphasizing that indigenous people should also be represented on the staff. Further, it would be necessary to initiate new health care projects in in officially recognized indigenous areas. However, around 300,000 of the 900,000 indigenous people in Brazil live outside officially recognized protected areas. Their situation must be improved as well. A particularly large number of indigenous people live in the city of Manaus in the state of Amazonas, under the poorest conditions. "In the slums of the city, with its 1.7 million inhabitants, they have no chance of being assigned one of the 50 intensive care beds in the case of an infection," Delius warned. "The indigenous peoples are the forgotten victims of the health crisis in Brazil."