As of this week, the new government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is expected to launch the promised macro-operation against illegal mining in the Brazilian Amazon, which aims to expel more than 20,000 people involved in the extraction of gold and other precious materials in the protected reserve of the Yanomami indigenous community.
The initial plan includes an initial deployment of 500 troops from various law enforcement agencies, including the police, army and navy, as well as the implementation of a logistical siege aimed at economically suffocating these groups before they have to resort to violence.
Thus, the Government is confident that all these people will leave the region as their installations and logistics are dismantled. The first «garimpeiros» (illegal extractors) to leave «spontaneously» did so this weekend, according to the Roraima Government.
In turn, the Minister of Defense, José Múcio, is scheduled to travel to the region this Wednesday, together with the rest of the Armed Forces high command to represent the beginning of the operations, which are expected to last at least for the next two months, according to the newspaper ‘O Globo’.
In view of the alarm generated by the humanitarian crisis which the Yanomami people – the largest of the indigenous peoples in Brazil – have been suffering for years, the new authorities initiated a shock plan which consisted of decreeing a sanitary emergency in these communities and initiating the first measures against illegal mining, which is blamed for the bad situation.
Last week, the first aircraft used for this type of illegal operations were requisitioned by the Brazilian Air Force, which will be able to shoot down any aerial vehicle that does not respond to the warning orders for its identification. As the region is difficult to access, the ‘garimpeiros’ resort to light aircraft and helicopters to access it.
The Ministry of Indigenous Peoples reported at the end of January that a hundred children between one and four years of age from the Yanomami community died from malnutrition, pneumonia and diarrhea as a consequence of the advance of illegal mining, responsible for the contamination of rivers and fields on which this community lives. There has also been a serious increase in malaria cases in the last year.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
