‘We are on
the eve of a genocide’: Brazil urged to save Amazon tribes from Covid-19
Members of the Suruwaha tribe in Amazonas,
Brasil. Photograph: © Sebastião Salgado
Open letter
by photojournalist Sebastião Salgado and global figures warns disease could
decimate indigenous peoples
by Tom
Phillips in Rio de Janeiro
Sun 3 May
2020 11.59 BSTLast modified on Sun 3 May 2020 14.39 BST
Brazil’s
leaders must take immediate action to save the country’s indigenous peoples
from a Covid-19 “genocide”, a global coalition of artists, celebrities,
scientists and intellectuals has said.
In an open
letter to the Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, figures including Madonna,
Oprah Winfrey, Brad Pitt, David Hockney and Paul McCartney warned the pandemic
meant indigenous communities in the Amazon faced “an extreme threat to their
very survival”.
“Five
centuries ago, these ethnic groups were decimated by diseases brought by
European colonisers … Now, with this new scourge spreading rapidly across
Brazil … [they] may disappear completely since they have no means of combating
Covid-19,” they wrote.
The
organiser of the petition, the Brazilian photojournalist Sebastião Salgado,
said trespassers including wildcat gold miners and illegal loggers must to be
expelled immediately from indigenous lands to stop them importing an illness
that has killed more than 240,000 people around the world, including 6,750 in
Brazil.
“We are on
the eve of a genocide,” Salgado, who has spent nearly four decades documenting
the Amazon and its inhabitants, told the Guardian.
Even before
Covid-19, Brazil’s indigenous peoples were locked in what activists call a
historic struggle for survival.
Critics
accuse Bolsonaro, a far-right populist in power since January 2019, of
stimulating the invasion of indigenous reserves and dismantling the government
agencies supposed to protect them.
“Indigenous
communities have never been so under attack … The government has no respect at
all for the indigenous territories,” Salgado said, pointing to crippling budget
cuts and the recent sacking of several of top environmental officials who had
targeted illegal prospectors and loggers.
But the
letter said the pandemic had made an already bleak outlook under Bolsonaro even
worse by paralysing what protection efforts remained.
“As a
result, there is nothing to protect indigenous peoples from the risk of
genocide caused by an infection introduced by outsiders who enter their land
illegally,” argued the signatories, who also include the supermodels Gisele
Bündchen and Naomi Campbell, the author Mario Vargas Llosa, the artist Ai
Weiwei, the architect Norman Foster and the actor Meryl Streep.
Salgado,
who documented Rwanda’s 1994 genocide, warned that the 300,000 indigenous
people in the Brazilian Amazon faced annihilation.
“In Rwanda
we saw a violent genocide, an attack, where people were physically killed. What
will happen in Brazil will also mean the death of the indigenous,” said the
76-year-old who has spent the last seven years photographing the region for his
final major project.
“When you
endorse or encourage an act that you know will eliminate a population or part
of a population, this is the definition of genocide … [It will be] genocide
because we know this is going to happen, we are facilitating ... the entry of
coronavirus ... [and therefore] permission is being given for the death of
these indigenous people.”
“It would
mean the extinction of Brazil’s indigenous peoples,” Salgado added.
Fears
Covid-19 could devastate indigenous communities grew last month when the death
of a Yanomami teenager revived horrific memories of epidemics caused by
roadbuilders and gold prospectors in the 1970s and 80s.
“In some of the villages I knew measles killed
50% of the population. If Covid does the same thing it would be a massacre,”
said Carlo Zaquini, an Italian missionary who has spent decades working with
the Yanomami.
The
Brazilian city so far worst hit by coronavirus is Manaus, the capital of
Amazonas state, where part of the Yanomami reserve is located.
Salgado –
who is calling for the creation of an army-led taskforce to evict intruders
from protected areas – admitted Bolsonaro would not act of his own volition.
But he believed international pressure could force the government to do so, as
happened last year when global outrage resulted in the military being deployed
to extinguish fires in the Amazon.
“Just in
the Brazilian Amazon we have 103 indigenous groups which have never been
contacted – they represent humanity’s pre-history,” Salgado said. “We
cannot allow all of this to disappear.”
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