Illegal gold miners allegedly murdered at least ten individuals of an Amazon tribe. These people in Amazonia have no contact with civilization, but investigations of their deaths continue. Other tribes in the area lost 20 members to ranchers who invaded their land.
As for the ten members of the Amazon tribe that died at the hands of the illegal gold miners, it’s sad to say, but they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Minding their own business, gathering eggs, the gold miners ended their lives. The perpetrators claimed they had to kill them or get killed.
The miners suspected of the murders were heard celebrating the deaths of the tribe members at a bar in a nearby town. They explicitly boasted of throwing their bodies in the river after cutting them up into separate pieces. One of them even displayed a paddle hand-carved by the man he killed as a sort of souvenir.
Living in the Javari Valley, the tribe is one of 20 others in the region. Brazil currently has more than 100 uncontacted tribes in the Amazon jungle. Unfortunately, this marks the second reported lethal attack in 2017 of tribe members living in this region.
Michael Temer, President of Brazil, cut the funding for indigenous affairs recently. Agencies who help these tribes will now have a harder time than ever trying to protect them. The Brazilian president also attempted the deforestation and mining of the Amazon rainforest.
His plan to open large sections of the Amazon jungle got rejected, but Temer won’t stop his efforts there. If he does succeed, more tribes will be slaughtered, and face extinction soon-thereafter. Without federally-funded agencies helping these communities, they are vulnerable beyond belief.
Funai, a Brazilian agency representing the indigenous tribes, is the group which aids the most with the recently contacted and uncontacted people living in Amazonia. Their funding is cut and must now find new ways of raising capital for the tribes. The agency was founded in 1967 and has protected the rights of the indigenous since then.
The Brazilian group submitted formal complaints to the prosecutor’s office after hearing what the illegal gold miners said at the bar. Located near the border with Colombia, the miners were unbothered by the witnesses as they spoke harshly of their victims. Let’s hope Brazilian authorities do their job well and lock these horrible individuals up behind bars – that is the least they deserve.