AlterNative

Yanomami mother and child.
© Steve Cox/Survival

Yanomami shaman and spokesman Davi Kopenawa has made an urgent appeal for support as the Yanomami territory in northern Brazil is being invaded by gold-miners.

Davi said, ‘The arrival of miners is increasing, and the Yanomami are very worried… Soon there will be conflicts between the miners and the Yanomami… I know how the miners treat the Yanomami and I am also very sad because some Yanomami are working at the mining sites in return for food. They will fall ill; they’ll catch malaria and sexually transmitted infections, because the miners will use the Indian women as they have done in the past’.

He added, ‘I am very angry with FUNAI (the Brazilian government’s indigenous affairs department) and the police; they have not controlled the entrance of miners. The Yanomami territory is being invaded’.

Davi Yanomami’s warning comes just months after he met with President Lula to ask him to remove all the gold-miners working illegally in the Yanomami territory.

The Yanomami’s land is recognized as an indigenous territory and it is illegal for miners to operate there. However, it is estimated that over 1,000 miners are in the area and the Yanomami warn now of a further influx.

The miners transmit diseases such as malaria and flu which are potentially fatal for the Yanomami who have little resistance to such introduced diseases. 500 new cases of malaria were found in the Yanomami population of Brazil in 2009. Their total population there is around 16,000.

The miners also pollute the rivers with mercury, contaminating drinking water and fish consumed by the Indians.

Yanomami health is suffering and critical medical care is not reaching them because of corruption and incompetence in Brazil’s National Health Foundation (FUNASA).

The danger of violence to the Yanomami is ever present as the miners are usually armed.

During the 1980s, the Yanomami suffered immensely when up to 40,000 Brazilian gold-miners invaded their land. Miners killed some Yanomami, destroyed many villages, and exposed them to diseases to which they had no immunity. Twenty percent of the Yanomami died in just seven years.

If the miners now working illegally on Yanomami land are not evicted as a matter of urgency, the Indians risk similar destruction and death.

Please write to the President of Brazil and ask him to take urgent action to remove the miners.

A Kwegu boy outside his hut. The Omo Valley tribes are finding it hard to feed their children in these times of drought.
© Survival

Many tribal people in the Lower Omo Valley in Ethiopia are starving as the region is in the grip of a drought and the river’s annual flood has failed.

The Kwegu, a small hunter-gatherer tribe, have been badly hit. Survival has received reports that two Kwegu children and four adults died from hunger in November.

A Kwegu man sent this message: ‘Go and give this news to your elders, we Kwegu people are hungry. Other tribes have cattle, they can drink milk and blood. We don’t have cattle; we eat from the Omo River. We depend on the fish, they are like our cattle. If the Omo floods are gone we will die.’

The rains have not fallen properly for three years in the Omo Valley, home to eight different tribes and around 200,000 people. The annual flood of the Omo River, a lifeline for the region, has decreased in recent years, and in 2009 it failed completely.

A Mun tribesman said, ‘Before the flood waters would come and we would have big cultivation sites. Now, all the cultivation sites … have got no water.’

It is not clear why the rains have stopped, or why the flood failed. What is clear, is that the Gibe cascade – a series of five dams planned for the Omo River – is likely to stretch an already strained region, and its people, to breaking point.

Some Kwegu blame the dam. One said, ‘Our land has become bad. They closed the water off tight and we know hunger. Open the dam and let the water flow.’

Gibe I is already complete, damming one of the tributaries of the Omo River. The Gibe II dam blocks the same river, and recently was a major source of embarrassment for the Ethiopian government and Italian firm Salini Construttori, after part of it collapsed just ten days after opening.

The Gibe III dam is about one third complete. A 50 meter cofferdam was recently built as part of the ongoing dam construction. Some believe it may have contributed to the lack of the annual flood.

If completed, Gibe III will be the second largest hydroelectric dam in Africa.

Experts warn it will irrevocably devastate the Omo River’s flood cycle, which is crucial to the Omo Valley tribes’ livelihood and survival.

The Ethiopian government claims Gibe III, aside from generating enough electricity to power the country several times over, will increase the safety of the downstream tribes by stopping giant floods from sweeping away livestock and people. But the tribes are clear – without the annual flood, they cannot survive.

A Mun tribesman said, ‘Now that the floods are gone we have a big problem. We are afraid of death. The rainy season hasn’t come for three years. Why haven’t the rains been working all this time? Did the sky not sign his work papers? Did he forget to work?’

‘There is no singing and dancing all along the Omo River now. The people are too hungry. The kids are quiet.’

‘The big rains have been gone for three years and now, we come to the Omo and there is no water.’

Work is in full flow on dams in the Penan's area.
© Survival

The CEO of the company overseeing a massive dam project on Penan tribal land in the Malaysian part of Borneo has come under scrutiny in his native Norway over violations of indigenous rights.

Norway’s Dagbladet newspaper questioned Sarawak Energy CEO Torstein Sjøtveit about the impact the project would have on the Penan. Sjøtveit claimed the Penan had been consulted, and that his company was complying with UN rules.

The UN states that developments on indigenous peoples’ land may only take place with their free, prior and informed consent. But the Penan affected by the Murum hydroelectric dam say they have been told they have no choice but to leave their land.

Dagbladet quotes a Penan man named Matu: ‘Those who want to take over our land… will not allow us to fish, hunt or collect berries and plants.’

Sjøtveit told Dagbladet that 1,350 people would be affected by the Murum dam project. He continued, ‘We are facing a dilemma between the need for development of the resources of the wider society and the wishes of the indigenous people to stay and live where they are.’

In September, six Penan and nine other indigenous people were arrested while trying to hand in a statement about their opposition to the dams to the office of Sarawak’s Chief Minister.

The Human Rights Commission of Malaysia, in a report on the Murum dam project, notes, ‘Instead of giving options to the Indigenous communities on whether or not to be resettled, the ‘consultations’ were carried out by the Government was [sic] only used as a mechanism to inform the communities of the Government’s decision and its impact towards those communities.’

The Murum dam is the first in a new series of large-scale hydroelectric projects being planned by the Sarawak state government, which will displace thousands of indigenous people. Critics in Malaysia have argued that the dams are superfluous to Sarawak’s energy needs.

Penan who were resettled to make way for Sarawak’s existing Bakun dam are unable to hunt or gather, and find it difficult to grow enough food on the small plots of land provided for them.

Applying traditional face paint to an Aboriginal boy, dance festival, Northern Queensland, Australia
© John Miles/Survival

A group of Alyawarr Aborigines have abandoned their central Australian settlement, and set up a new community at a place called Honeymoon Bore.

Banjo Morton, who led the move, said that they’d been treated as outcasts and not involved in decisions about their community, especially since the federal indigenous ‘intervention’ policy began in 2007.

The ‘intervention’ was a reaction to a report citing widespread child abuse amongst Aborigine communities. The government’s response was to send police and troops to many remote communities, with special bans on alcohol and pornography.

Control was wrested from community leaders and there was almost no consultation or involvement with the Aborigines themselves. The intervention has been rejected by remote communities and criticized by the UN as discriminatory.

Honeymoon Bore is just outside the area covered by the intervention, so the community is able to take control of its way of life and its future. Mr Morton told journalists, ‘We feel free and happy here, away from all the rules and interference of the intervention.’

Currently about 70 people are now living in the new settlement, in tents and crude shelters. Although their current situation is basic, it is better than the overcrowding in the old settlement where raw sewage was ankle deep in some houses and people had no say in decisions made about their lives.

Richard Downs, another Alyawarr leader, has said that he envisages the community growing and becoming a genuine indigenous ‘utopia’. He said, ‘Our aim is to show that Aboriginal people can break the cycle of dependency, that we can look after ourselves on our country.’

Survival’s Progress Can Kill campaign highlights how loss of land and control over their way of life has been disastrous for tribal communities all over the world. It often leads to dependency, depression, suicides and substance abuse.

Steps by communities, such as those at Honeymoon Bore, to take back control over their lives, their lands and their way of life, offer a glimmer of hope for tribal peoples around the world.

Dongria Kondh take part in the festival on top of Niyam Dongar Mountain.
© Survival

The Dongria Kondh tribe in India this weekend held their annual festival of worship on the top of their sacred mountain, which UK company Vedanta Resources is determined to mine for aluminium ore.

Hundreds of people danced and sang on top of their sacred mountain in Orissa State’s Niyamgiri Hills. The festival is usually only open to worshipers but this year the Dongria Kondh allowed journalists and activists to attend, to demonstrate the importance of their mountain to the outside world.

Dongria man Dodi has said, ‘Niyam Rajah is our god and we worship him. We cannot stop worshipping. This god is not for any government. He is there for us Adivasis [tribal peoples], …This place does not belong to any government.’

Neither Vedanta nor the Orissa government have consulted the Dongria Kondh about the mine planned for their sacred mountain. The project is rapidly becoming the most controversial mining venture in the world.

Vedanta has been trying to mine for aluminium ore in the Dongria’s land for several years, but local resistance, legal challenges and growing international outrage have so far stopped the project. Vedanta needs the ore to feed the refinery it has already built at the foot of the hills. The refinery, recently condemned by Amnesty International, left more than a hundred families landless and polluted the groundwater, a fact acknowledged by the state pollution board.

Dongria man Lodu said, ‘Now people in that area have realized and now they are speaking out against it. Vedanta has snatched everything away from them… they have become beggars.’

The Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust is the most recent investor to dump Vedanta’s shares over human rights concerns, following the Church of England and the Norwegian government. The UK government has also condemned Vedanta, saying a change in the company’s behaviour is ‘essential.’

The central government of India has not issued final clearance to Vedanta’s mine, and the Minister for Environment and Forests told journalists that ‘there is still hope for Niyamgiri’.

Stephen Corry, Survival’s director, said today, ‘This weekend, the Dongria Kondh have demonstrated to the world how vital their sacred mountain is to them. Yet Vedanta is determined to destroy this site in blatant breach of its duty to respect the Dongria’s human rights. The tide is turning: investors are showing Vedanta that it cannot get away with such behaviour. Now the Indian government must protect the rights of its citizens and stop this mine once and for all.’

The children of Ms Buddhapati Chakma, who was shot dead by soldiers, speak to local journalists.
© Satrong Chakma

Reliable sources report that at least six Jumma tribal people were killed, and hundreds of houses burnt to the ground, in an attack by soldiers and settlers on tribal villages in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh on Saturday. The attacks took place in the Sajek region, where tensions have been rising since Bengali settlers, supported by the army, have been expanding their settlements on Jumma land.

Local reports state that soldiers shot indiscriminately at Jumma villagers after one soldier was injured during clashes. Many other Jummas were hurt. Settlers, aided by the security forces, set fire to, and destroyed, five villages, consisting of at least 200 houses. A Buddhist temple and a church have also been burnt down. Thousands of Jummas have fled to the jungle to escape from the soldiers and settlers.

The local administration has imposed an order known as section 144, which prohibits the assembly of five or more people and the holding of public meetings. This is hampering the Jumma’s efforts to establish the whereabouts of missing people and to confirm the numbers killed. Two bullet-ridden bodies have been recovered (those of Mr Lakkhi Bijoy Chakma (40) and Ms Buddhapati Chakma (36)), but tribal leaders report that the army has removed the bodies of several other Jummas who were killed during the incident.

Hundreds of thousands of settlers have been moved into the Hill Tracts over the last sixty years, in a policy supported by successive governments, displacing the eleven Jumma tribes and subjecting them to violent repression.

In 1997 the government and the Jummas signed a peace accord that committed the government to removing military camps from the region and to ending the theft of Jumma land by settlers and the army. The accord offered hope, but military camps remain in the Hill Tracts and violence and land grabbing continue.

Survival’s director, Stephen Corry said, ‘This horrific incident is just the latest in a long line of brutal attacks on the Jumma tribal people. They have been killed, tortured and raped, and their lands stolen, for far too long. We call on the government of Bangladesh to put an end to army violence in the Chittagong Hill Tracts and to withdraw the army camps, as promised in the peace accord. Those responsible for this atrocity must be brought to justice.’

Note to editors: Survival has pictures from the incident.
Contact Miriam Ross: mr@survivalinternational.org

Note to UK editors: Jumma people living in London will protest outside the Bangladesh High Commission on Wednesday 24th of February at 10 am.

Members of the Endorois tribe, Kenya.
© Minority Rights Group International (MRG)

The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights has recommended that the Endorois tribe in Kenya be given back its land, after they were evicted from it to make way for a nature reserve in the 1970s.

Kipsan Kipkazi, of the Endorois Welfare Council, said, ‘We are delighted that the African Commission has recognised the wrong that was done decades ago.’ The ruling comes after a legal battle between the government of Kenya and the Endorois tribe, supported by Minority Rights Group and the Centre for Minority Rights Development in Kenya.

The Endorois are a semi-nomadic tribe who herded cattle and goats through Kenya’s Rift Valley for centuries. In the early 1970s they were forced from their land, to create the Lake Bogoria National Reserve. The Reserve is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Indigenous land rights are not widely recognised in Africa, and this is the first time that the African Commission has upheld these rights. The ruling recommends that the Endorois be granted ‘unrestricted access’ to Lake Bogoria, royalties from existing economic activities in the area (mostly tourism), and the right of ownership and full restitution of their ancestral land.

In another part of Kenya, the Ogiek tribe are seeking to ensure their rights over the Mau forest are not ignored as the government attempts to deal with the severe environmental degradation caused by deforestation and settlement by outsiders. Kenya’s Prime Minister Raila Odinga has said no Ogiek will be evicted, and the Ogiek are cautiously hopeful that he will keep his word.

A bulldozer works on a road built through Ayoreo-Totobiegosode land, Paraguay
© Survival

A global letter-writing campaign to protect the lives of uncontacted Indians in Paraguay has been launched by Survival.

Paraguay is home to the only uncontacted Indians outside the Amazon basin, but their lands are being rapidly destroyed for beef production. Contacted members of the tribe, known as the Ayoreo-Totobiegosode, have been trying to claim legal title to a small part of their ancestral territory since 1993, but most of it is still in private hands.

A Brazilian ranching company, Yaguarete Porá, has announced plans to clear a large part of their 78,000 hectare estate, even though uncontacted Ayoreo-Totobiegosode Indians are known to use the area. The estate is within the 1993 land claim.

The campaign targets Paraguay’s President Lugo, who has so far failed to live up to pre-election promises to protect indigenous lands from invasion.

Survival’s Director Stephen Corry said today, ‘The plight of the uncontacted Ayoreo-Totobiegosode is desperate. They’re seeing their forests literally bulldozed around them by cattle ranchers who are hell-bent on destroying large parts of it. Why should the Indians have to flee from one corner of the forest to the other? They simply want to live there in peace, and under the law they have that right.’

Three more shareholders have disinvested from Vedanta Resources.
© Survival

Survival welcomes the news that the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust is selling its shares in Vedanta Resources due to concerns over the company’s human rights record. Two other shareholders, the Marlborough Ethical Fund and Millfield House Foundation, have also sold their shares.

Survival is campaigning for all shareholders to pull out of the company, and has been lobbying the Rowntree Trust since July 2009.

The news is just the latest in a string of PR disasters for Vedanta. Last week Amnesty International released a report slamming the company for ‘failing to respect the human rights’ of the Dongria Kondh tribe of Orissa, India, on whose sacred mountain it plans to build a bauxite mine. The previous week the Church of England also sold its shares, saying, ’We are not satisfied that Vedanta has shown, or is likely in future to show, the level of respect for human rights and local communities that we expect…’

The British and Norwegian governments have both condemned the project, and Martin Currie Investments has also disinvested following pressure from Survival. The BP Pension Fund has reduced its shareholding over similar concerns.

Stephen Corry, Survival’s director, said today, ‘It is really encouraging to see shareholders taking indigenous rights seriously and refusing to bankroll Vedanta’s activities. They have found that ‘engagement’ with the company is fruitless: Vedanta is clearly determined to mine the Dongria Kondh’s sacred mountain. Vedanta is fast becoming the most controversial mining company in the world – controversy that ethical investors would be well advised to distance themselves from.’

Bushman man.
© Survival

Over 400 Bushmen were denied the right to vote in Botswana’s 2009 general election, with five Bushman communities inside the Central Kalahari Game Reserve omitted from the electoral register.

Speaking to Botswana’s Mmegi newspaper, Roy Sesana, Bushman spokesman, claimed, ‘People were living in those settlements during the elections. They did not vote when the rest of the nation went to the polls’. The revelations were confirmed by the District Commissioner and are the latest in a long line of assaults against the Bushmen’s rights.

Botswana’s president, Ian Khama, who was sworn in as the country’s fourth president after last year’s elections, has continuously flouted a 2006 High Court ruling that said the Bushmen have the right to live on their lands in the reserve. His government has denied them access to a borehole which they rely on for water, at the same time as drilling new boreholes for wildlife and supporting a safari lodge with swimming pool in the reserve.

Khama has also described the Bushmen’s way of life as an ‘archaic fantasy’, and a South African woman was recently arrested for remarking that he ‘looked like a Bushman’.

The Bushmen’s political marginalization was acknowledged in the latest US Department of State’s 2008 human rights report which said that they ‘lacked adequate political representation, and were not fully aware of their civil rights’. It also criticized the government for its ‘narrow interpretation of a 2006 high court ruling’.

The revelations emerged recently after Sesana told the same newspaper that attempts to negotiate with the government have broken down, as it failed to provide support for a representative team. The Bushmen have now lodged legal proceedings against the government in an attempt to gain access to their borehole.

Survival’s director, Stephen Corry, said, ‘It’s no surprise that the government excluded the Bushmen from the election; they have been treated like second-class citizens for years. Why would the government give voting rights to the Bushmen when it won’t even let them have water?’

Yali, Papua
© Jerry Callow/Survival

Viktor Kaisiepo, the dedicated and charismatic Papuan activist, has died aged 61 in the Netherlands. Viktor was an indefatigable campaigner for the rights of the peoples of West Papua, and for other indigenous peoples.

Viktor spent his early years in West Papua but his family moved to the Netherlands when the territory was handed over to Indonesia in 1962. He lived in the Netherlands for the rest of his life, always pushing for the rights of the Papuan people to be heard and respected.

Viktor was the European Representative of the Papuan Council of the Papuan Presidium (PDP) as well as International Representative of the Dewan Adat Papua (DAP), the Indigenous Papuan Council. He was involved in lobbying Jakarta to engage in genuine dialogue with the Papuan people. He was a regular visitor to the United Nations, for many years working alongside Survival in bringing the plight of the Papuan people to the attention of the UN Human Rights Commission.

All who met him will remember Viktor Kaisiepo. His dedication, conviction and charm must have inspired hundreds of people over the years to take up the cause of the Papuan peoples’ struggle. Our condolences go to his family and friends in the Netherlands, West Papua and beyond.

Dani man, Papua
© Adrian Arbib/Survival

The Indonesian government has banned a book on the repression of human rights in Papua. The book, by respected Papuan churchman Rev. Socratez Sofyan Yoman, is one of five books to have been banned in a move that appears to hark back to the authoritarian Suharto era.

Rev. Yoman’s book, ‘The Voice of Churches for Suppressed People, Blood and God’s Tears in West Papua,’ has been banned by the Indonesian Attorney General’s office. The office is also said to be evaluating 200 other books it considers to be too provocative.

The Justice and Human Rights Minister Patrialis Akbar said that his ministry had judged 20 books to be ‘very dangerous to the public,’ and would recommend that they be banned. The ministry also cited ‘provocative motives to disintegrate the nation’ as a reason for banning the books.

Among the books believed to be on the list is ‘The Indigenous World 2009’, published by the International Working Group for Indigenous Affairs and launched at the UN in New York. Another is believed to be a translation of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, which Indonesia voted for at the UN General Assembly.

Indonesia’s Human Rights Commission has also criticized the government for not upholding human rights in Papua. Matius Murib from the Commission’s Papua branch said the criminalization of Papuan civilians had escalated significantly in 2009, and that human rights activists were being closely watched and intimidated.

Murib added that the government uses military and security approaches in dealing with Papuans rather than question whether its failure to respect Papuans’ basic rights might be the reason for their separatist demands.

Juan Vasquez didn't have much of a childhood. He never went to school, began to work as a ranch hand at age 12, married three years later and has nine children.

Photo of the uncontacted tribe photographed last year in the Brazilian Amazon, near the Peruvian border.
© © GLEISON MIRANDA/FUNAI

Brazil’s Attorney General’s office has warned that uncontacted Indians in the Amazon are at risk of extinction due to a highway that runs through Rondônia state to the Bolivian border.

The Attorney General’s office has condemned the Department of Infrastructure and Transport for breaking environmental licensing laws, and has ordered asphalting work on the BR-429 road to be suspended. It has highlighted that the department did not take into account the impact of upgrading the road on indigenous peoples in the region.

The new highway runs through the municipality of São Miguel do Guaporé, where according to the government’s indigenous affairs department, FUNAI, ‘large groups of Indians are living in the area affected by BR-429.’

Tari, an Amondawa Indian leader, laments: ‘I never imagined that one day São Miguel would be transformed into pasture and that the forest where I have been walking all my life would one day completely disappear.’

The Attorney General’s office is concerned that paving the road will increase the illegal extraction of natural resources from protected areas and will cause confrontations between indigenous peoples and those invading their territory. It warns that uncontacted Indians could die as a result of conflict.

The paving of the highway will directly affect the uncontacted Jurureí Indians, according to federal prosecutor Daniel Fontenele, and may lead to contact between the tribe and outsiders.

The Massacó indigenous territory, inhabited solely by uncontacted Indians, probably of the Sirionó tribe, is another area at risk of invasion.

Crossed spears left by an uncontacted tribe in the Amazon where Perenco is working
© Marek Wolodzko/Survival

More than a thousand people voted for Anglo-French company Perenco in a spoof Friends of the Earth award for human rights.

Perenco was nominated for the award, the ‘Pinocchio Prize 2009’, for its billion dollar project in a part of the Peruvian Amazon inhabited by at least two uncontacted tribes. The company’s work in the area violates the tribes’ rights under international law, and could decimate them if contact is made.

The winner of the award, Bolloré, was announced in a statement by Friends of the Earth (France) yesterday. Perenco came third with 22% of the vote.

The ‘Pinocchio Prize’ is intended to raise awareness of, and condemn, French businesses who ‘perpetrate the most serious human rights violations.’ Perenco’s chairman, Francois Perrodo, met Peru’s president, Alan Garcia, earlier this year while indigenous people in the Amazon were protesting against his company.

Hydropower dams are being built across the Amazon in the name of combating climate change.
© Survival

Measures to stop global warming risk being as harmful to tribal peoples as climate change itself, according to a new report from Survival.

The report, ‘The most inconvenient truth of all: climate change and indigenous people’, sets out four key ‘mitigation measures’ that threaten tribal people:

1. Biofuels: promoted as an alternative, ‘green’ source of energy to fossil fuels, much of the land allocated to grow them is the ancestral land of tribal people. If biofuels expansion continues as planned, millions of indigenous people worldwide stand to lose their land and livelihoods.

2. Hydro-electric power: A new boom in dam construction in the name of combating climate change is driving thousands of tribal people from their homes.

3. Forest conservation: Kenya’s Ogiek hunter-gatherers are being forced from the forests they have lived in for hundreds of years to ‘reverse the ravages’ of global warming.

4. Carbon offsetting: Tribal peoples’ forests now have a monetary value in the booming ‘carbon credits’ market. Indigenous people say this will lead to forced evictions and the ‘theft of our land’.

The report calls for tribal people to be fully involved in decisions that affect them, and for their land ownership rights to be upheld.

Survival Director Stephen Corry said today, ‘This report highlights ‘the most inconvenient truth of all’ – that the world’s tribal people, who have done the least to cause climate change and are most affected by it, are now having their rights violated and land devastated in the name of attempts to stop it. Hiding behind the global push to prevent climate change, governments and companies are mounting a massive land grab. As usual, where money and vast profits are at stake, the world’s indigenous people are being shamefully swept aside.’

Read the report – PDF (3.5MB)

A media kit is available with images and video interviews

Guarani man
© João Ripper/Survival

The body of a Guarani Indian has been found dead and badly bruised in a river close to his ancestral land in Brazil, following an armed attack on the community of Ypo’i on 30 October.

The body of teacher Genivaldo Verá was identified by his relatives on 10 November. Brazilian authorities are examining it to establish the cause of death. The attack happened near the ‘Triunfo’ ranch, built on Guarani land close to the city of Paranhos in Mato Grosso do Sul in south-west Brazil, near the Paraguayan border.

Genivaldo’s cousin and fellow teacher Rolindo Verá disappeared after the attack and is still missing. The Guarani are urging the Brazilian and Paraguayan authorities to carry out an urgent investigation, as they fear he might also have been killed.

Genivaldo and Rolindo Verá had joined other Guarani on 29 October in reoccupying part of their ancestral land or tekohá. Their land had been stolen and occupied by ranchers, and they had been living with 3,000 other Guarani squeezed onto just 2,118 hectares of land.

For years the Guarani have longed to return Ypo’i. FUNAI, the Brazilian government’s Indian affairs department, has failed to demarcate their land despite its mandate to do so.

The day after they returned to Ypo’i, the Guarani were attacked by a group of armed men who arrived in a truck and began shooting at them, beating them, harassing them and forcing them out of the area. Several Guarani were injured and Genivaldo and Rolindo went missing.

Guarani chief Verá said, ‘When we arrived at our tekohá, we were very happy. We began to build some huts so we could begin living on our land again. But it wasn’t long before a gang of gunmen arrived and beat us up and shot at us. We started to run away. Much more than the pain of the bullets and the beatings, we felt the pain of being forced away from what is ours.’

The attack is the most recent in a series of violent events in Mato Grosso do Sul. A week prior to this attack, Terena Indians who had occupied a part of their traditional land in the municipality of Sidrolândia were also expelled by force.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, has just visited Brazil and described the situation of indigenous people as ‘astonishingly invisible.’ She said, ‘they are being held back by discrimination and indifference, chased out of their lands and into forced labour.’

The Guarani of Mato Grosso do Sul face one of the most difficult situations of all the indigenous peoples of Brazil. Having once occupied a homeland of forests and plains totaling some 350,000 square kilometers, they now live in severely overcrowded settlements.

Some Guarani have no land at all, and live camped by roadsides. They face unemployment, poverty, illness, malnutrition, violence, exploitation in the sugarcane fields, and a suicide rate unequalled in South America.

Survival International has opened a fund to support the Guarani, in association with the film ‘Birdwatchers’, which stars Guarani-Kaiowá Indians. All donations will go towards helping them defend their rights, lands and futures.

Perenco is exploring for oil inside uncontacted Indians' land.
© Survival

An Anglo-French company has been nominated for a spoof Friends of the Earth (FoE) award for its billion dollar project in a part of the Amazon inhabited by two of the world’s last uncontacted tribes.

The company, Perenco, is one of four nominees in the human rights category for Friends of the Earth France’s ‘Pinocchio Prize 2009’. The prize is intended to raise awareness of, and condemn, French businesses who ‘perpetrate the most serious human rights violations.’

Perenco has been nominated for its project in the Peruvian Amazon where it plans to drill for millions of barrels of oil on land belonging to uncontacted tribes, according to FoE. In doing so, Perenco is contravening a recent recommendation from the UN to Peru’s government, and is being sued by Peru’s national indigenous peoples’ organisation, AIDESEP. Perenco denies the tribes exist.

FoE says that in June there was a ‘massacre’ following indigenous protests against government plans to open up their land to oil companies without their consent. ‘Peru’s president, Alan Garcia, has recognised publicly that the government failed to consult adequately with indigenous people about oil concessions. But Perenco doesn’t seem ready to learn from this, and is aggravating what is an extremely tense situation following the massacre,’ says FoE.

Perenco’s chairman, Francois Perrodo, met Alan Garcia earlier this year and promised to invest two billion dollars in the project. At the same time, indigenous people in the Amazon were protesting against the company and preventing their boats from traveling on a major Amazon tributary.

Survival Director, Stephen Corry, said today, ‘This is a major embarrassment for Perenco. One way of guaranteeing they don’t win the Pinocchio prize would be to abandon this project tomorrow.’

Voting for the Pinocchio prize can be done on-line: http://www.prix-pinocchio.org/nomines.php. The winner will be announced on 24 November.

Botswana's persecution of the Bushmen has continued under President Khama.
© Survival

A South African woman who said Botswana’s president ‘looks like a Bushman’ was arrested, detained for two days and fined for ‘insulting Botswana’.

Dorsey Dube was arrested after commenting on a portrait of President Khama at a control post on the Botswana-South Africa border. She said the President looked like her friend’s father, who has Bushman features.

The deeply-entrenched racist attitudes of many people in authority in Botswana towards the Bushmen were starkly revealed, however, when the authorities assumed it was meant as an insult. Survival International is sending a report on the incident to the UN Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

Ms Dube says she was held at the police station and not allowed to call anyone in South Africa for assistance, though her friends did eventually reach help. She was released after spending a night in a prison cell and a further full day in custody.

President Khama (who is himself half-British) has referred to the Bushmen’s way of life as an ‘archaic fantasy’. The government has banned them from hunting for food or accessing water on their land, in a bid to force the Bushmen to abandon their land and lifestyle.

President Ian Khama, who was returned to office after elections in October, is a board member of Conservation International.

Survival’s Director Stephen Corry said today, ‘You couldn’t have clearer evidence of the racism towards Bushmen in Botswana than this incident. A South African person thought resembling a Bushman was complimentary, but Botswana officials took it as an insult. It’s doubly tragic when you consider that President Khama’s father, the country’s first President, himself endured a great deal of racist abuse from the colonial authorities for marrying a British woman, and that he promised the country’s Bushmen that their rights would always be protected.’

A spokesman for the Ogiek has condemned the Peruvian government's attempt to disband AIDESEP.
© Survival

A spokesman from a tribe in Kenya has condemned the Peruvian government’s attempt to destroy Peru’s Amazon indigenous movement.

The condemnation comes from Kiplangat Cheruyot from the Ogiek tribe in response to the revelation that Peru’s government plans to disband Peru’s national organisation for indigenous people in the Amazon, known by its Spanish acronym AIDESEP.

‘We, the Ogiek Indigenous people of Kenya, condemn in the strongest possible terms the Peruvian Government for its human rights abuses, including arrest, prosecution and harassment of indigenous and tribal people.

‘We understand that Peru is a signatory to several United Nations conventions that seek to promote and protect its citizens. It’s sad to note that the same government violates its own national laws by not respecting or recognising indigenous peoples’ rights as contained in the UN Declaration on Indigenous Rights.

‘We call upon the international community, including the UN secretary-general, to send its Special Rapporteur for an immediate fact-finding mission on human rights situations in Peru. We cannot just sit by and watch what is happening. We must take all necessary avenues to make the government change its ill motives and intentions.’

Cheruyot is a spokesman for the Ogiek People’s Development Program. The Ogiek face becoming the world’s latest ‘conservation refugees’ after the Kenyan government recently announced plans to evict them from their land in a bid to stop climate change.

AIDESEP was founded in 1980 and represents 350,000 indigenous people in the Peruvian Amazon.