July 15, 2022

16:07

Marcela Leiros – from Amazon Agency

BRASILIA – The indigenous leader and former coordinator of the Union of Indigenous Peoples of the Javari Valley (Univaja), Jader Marubo, said on Thursday, 14, in a meeting in the Senate, that indigenous people now feel the consequences of the anti-indigenous policy promised by the President of the Republic, Jair Bolsonaro (PL), in 2018, during the campaign that elected him. Marubo also holds the National Indian Foundation (Funai) responsible for the death of indigenous expert Bruno da Cunha Araújo Pereira.

“If we had a strong Funai, an active Funai, that did the work it was created to do, Bruno would be alive today. During the campaign, President Bolsonaro himself said that he would cut down Funai, and today we understand what it is to cut down Funai. He dismantled it”, he said.

Read also: Bruno Pereira’s widow demands a retract from federal government for the death of indigenous expert

Jader Marubo is referring to the president’s allegations against indigenous rights, especially land demarcation. Also in 2017, during an event at the club “A Hebraica” in Rio de Janeiro, Bolsonaro guaranteed that in an eventual government there would not be “an inch of land for indigenous people and quilombolas”. Since then he has been critical of the demarcation of territories.

He also talked about the scrapping of Funai’s structure in the region and what needs to change for the work of protecting indigenous territory to be effective. “We don’t have large vessels while the criminals in the region do. The bases have to have a structure that is very adequate for the work that falls to them. More contingent personnel. We don’t even have uniforms to identify that we are Funai, for the agents that are there in the base running danger”, he added.

Fear of deaths

The indigenous leader said, in the temporary external commission of the Senate that proposes to investigate the measures taken in view of the disappearances of the british journalist Dominic Mark Phillips, the “Dom Phillips” and the indigenous leader, that killings can happen again in the region of Vale do Javari and in a short period of time.

“Everything indicates that it could happen again yes [killings]. Not only me [is threatened], but Eliesio [Univaja’s legal coordinator] himself, who is a relative of mine. Other leaders have their names on the list to be killed. It won’t happen tomorrow, in a week, in a month, but it will happen if nothing is done”, he said.

It is worth remembering that Lawmaker Vivi Reis (PSOL-PA), rapporteur of the external commission created in the House of Representatives to also follow the investigations of the “Dom and Bruno case”, requested protection for at least 14 people, whose names were not made public, who are under threat. The insecurity and lack of protection for the people threatened in the region of the second largest demarcated indigenous territory in the country were detailed by Jader Marubo.

“There was harassment by Colombians at Funai. They came to ask what ‘x’ and ‘y’ were doing, how I could talk to these people. At Univaja, they also went to ask where were ‘x’ and ‘y’, who wanted to talk to enter the indigenous land and get to know the work. Two weeks ago, a complaint was also filed. This has created a very heavy atmosphere in the region, especially for the people who do this work, because crime does not stop, it finds other ways of acting”, he also said.

Other deaths

The death of Bruno Pereira was not the only murder of a Funai servant in the region that borders Peru and Colombia, also known as one of the routes of international drug trafficking. In 2019, the body’s collaborator Maxciel Pereira dos Santos was murdered by gunfire in Tabatinga (AM), a city that lies on the border of the two countries. He worked at a base of the indigenous body in Vale do Javari, attacked four times since last year.

The crime has not been solved until today. The superintendent of the Federal Police (PF) in Amazonas, Eduardo Fontes, said this week, in a public hearing at the House of Representatives, that the institution is analyzing the connection between the murder of Maxciel and the deaths of Bruno and Dom Phillips.