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At last! Brazil begins long-awaited operation to save Earth’s most threatened tribe
un articulo por Survival International (abridged)
After months of campaigning by Survival
International, Brazil’s government has launched a
major ground operation to evict illegal invaders
from the land of the Awá, Earth’s most threatened
tribe .
Students outside the Liceo Cesare Beccaria in Milan with the awáicon logo.
click on photo to enlarge
Soldiers, field workers from Brazil’s indigenous
affairs department FUNAI, Environment Ministry
special agents and police officers are being
dispatched to notify and remove the illegal
settlers, ranchers and loggers – many of whom are
heavily armed – from the Awá indigenous territory
in the North-Eastern Brazilian Amazon. The
operation comes at a crucial time as loggers are
closing in on the tribe and more than 30% of the
forest has already been destroyed.
In June 2013 Brazil’s military launched a ground
operation against illegal logging around the land
of the Awá. The forces closed down at least eight
saw mills and confiscated and destroyed other
machinery, but they did not remove the loggers and
ranchers from inside the Indians’ land.
An Awá man told Survival, ‘For a long time we’ve
been asking for the invaders to be removed… we don’t
want to see the loggers destroying our forest. We
like to see the forest standing.’
This break-through operation follows a high-
profile campaign by Survival International, which
has been backed by celebrities such as Hollywood
stars Colin Firth and Gillian Anderson, UK fashion
designer Vivienne Westwood and Brazilian
photographer Sebastião Salgado, who recently
visited the tribe to document their plight.
Salgado’s images and the Awá’s shocking story
reached millions of people worldwide as they were
featured in Vanity Fair, the Sunday Times and
Brazilian news outlet O Globo.
Since the launch of the campaign in April 2012,
Survival’s supporters have sent more than 55,000
letters to Brazil’s Minister of Justice, urging
him to evict the invaders, and have spread the
campaign’s awáicon logo around the world’s
landmarks, such as Brazil’s Sugarloaf Mountain,
South Africa’s Table Mountain, San Francisco’s
Golden Gate Bridge and the Eiffel Tower in Paris.
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the
Americas’ leading human rights body, also demanded
answers from the Brazilian government, having
received an urgent petition from Survival and
Brazilian NGO CIMI.
As a result of the global campaign, the Awá were put
at the top of FUNAI’s priority list in April 2012,
but it has taken the government until now to start
evicting the illegal invaders, while more forest has
been destroyed.
The Awá are one of the last nomadic hunter-gatherer
tribes in Brazil and depend entirely on the
rainforest. They have been finding it increasingly
difficult to find game and are scared to go hunting
for fear of encountering the armed loggers.
Around 100 Awá are uncontacted and are
particularly vulnerable to attacks and the spread
of diseases to which they have little immunity.
Survival has welcomed the start of the evictions
operation, and is now urging the Brazilian
authorities to put in place a long-term solution
to stop the invaders from returning, and to
guarantee the safety of the 450-strong tribe. . .
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Text of the Kari-Oca Declaration of 1992,
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KARI-OCA DECLARATION Of 1992
Brazil, May 30, 1992
(Click here for the Kari-Oca II Declaration of 2012)
We, the Indigenous Peoples, walk to the future in the footprints of our ancestors.
From the smallest to the largest living being, from the four directions, from the air, the land and the mountains. The creator has placed us. The Indigenous peoples upon our Mother the earth.
The footprints of our ancestors are permanently etched upon the lands of our peoples.
We, the Indigenous peoples, maintain our inherent rights to self-determination. We have always had the right to decide our own forms of government, to use our own laws, to raise and educate our children, to our own cultural identity without interference.
We continue to maintain our rights as peoples despite centuries of deprivation, assimilation and genocide.
We maintain our inalienable rights to our lands and territories, to all our resources -- above and below -- and to our waters. . ... continuación.
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