Lula dismisses the situation of the Yanomami as “genocide” and “premeditated crime”

Brasilia, Jan 22 (EFE).- The President of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, described this Sunday the situation of the Yanomami indigenous people as “genocide” and “premeditated crime”, for which he implicitly blamed the Jair administration Bolsonaro (2019-2022).

“More than a humanitarian crisis, what I saw in Roraima was a genocide. A premeditated crime against the Yanomami, committed by a government insensitive to the suffering of the Brazilian people,” the president said on his social networks.

Lula traveled on Saturday to the state of Roraima, on the border with Venezuela, to see in situ the serious state of the Yanomami people, who suffer numerous cases of child malnutrition and serious illnesses considered preventable.

This Sunday, the Urihi Yanomami Association reported the death of an indigenous woman “due to her serious state of malnutrition” and asked that the photograph of her that was disclosed to denounce the situation of the community, for cultural reasons, stop being published. .

In this context, the Government ordered the opening of an investigation for a possible crime of “genocide” against this ethnic group, as announced the day before by the Minister of Justice, Flávio Dino.

“There are strong indications of a crime of genocide and it will be investigated by the Federal Police,” said Dino, who accompanied the leader of the Workers’ Party (PT) to Roraima.

A group of PT deputies has also filed a complaint with the Federal Public Ministry against Bolsonaro for an alleged crime of “genocide” against the Yanomami.

The Government has declared a “sanitary emergency” of “national importance” in the Yanomami indigenous land, which is the largest in Brazil, with nearly 10 million hectares, due to the “lack of assistance” in recent years, it alleged.

Today he announced that he will speed up the procedures to hire more doctors to “permanently” care for the Yanomami, as well as other native peoples of the country.

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The Ministry of Indigenous Peoples estimates that “at least 570” Yanomami minors have died in recent years “due to mercury contamination, malnutrition and hunger.”

According to the portfolio, 99 Yanomami between the ages of 1 and 4 died in 2022 alone as a result of malnutrition, pneumonia, or diarrhea linked to the “advance of illegal mining in the region,” which pollutes the river and destroys the jungle.

The villages also suffer malaria outbreaks and violence from illegal miners, who are estimated to number more than 20,000 on the Yanomami indigenous land, located between the states of Amazonas and Roraima.

During his administration, Bolsonaro cut the budget of the bodies that combat environmental crimes and defended the exploitation of minerals and wood in indigenous reserves.

Without responding directly to Lula, the far-right leader dismissed the accusations of the new government as a “farce of the left”, in a message posted on his social networks that he accompanied with a series of measures that he says he took during his tenure to preserve the health of Indigenous.

The now ex-governor is currently in the United States, where he traveled on December 30, two days before the end of his term, without an official return to Brazil.

(c) EFE Agency