Brazil has launched raids against illegal gold miners blamed for a humanitarian crisis on the country’s largest Indigenous reservation, as President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva promised to defend the Yanomami people after years of neglect and rising violence.
The Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources said in a statement that agents destroyed a helicopter, a plane, a bulldozer, and support structures for the miners on Yanomami land in Brazil’s northernmost state of Roraima.
For years, Yanomami Indigenous leaders have said the expansion of illegal mining on their territories was causing widespread environmental degradation, as well as increased threats, violence, and disease. The country’s former far-right President Jair Bolsonaro had promoted increased development in the Amazon while his administration weakened the Brazilian environmental protection and Indigenous rights agencies.
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