By: Helena Nordenberg/TT
Published: Less than 20 min ago
1 of 4 Photo: Eraldo Peres/AP/TT
She belongs to Brazil’s indigenous population and is the latest weapon in the fight against the predatory exploitation and destruction of the Amazon rainforest by criminal gold hunters. It will be a difficult battle, but lawyer and human rights activist Joênia Wapixana is not going to back down.
– Either you fight for the rights of your people or you lose everything, she says.
Loud excavators carve deep wounds in the previously untouched and life-giving rainforest. Aerial photographs taken from a helicopter show how much devastation the illegal pursuit of gold and other precious metals can cause in a short time. The illegal looting is devastating, not least for the Yanomami people, to which Joênia Wapixana belongs.
Brazil’s newly elected president Lula da Silva is now trying in various ways to put an end to the exploitation that escalated during the rule of the far-right Jair Bolsonaro. Hoping to make a fortune, tens of thousands of gold-hungry profiteers flocked to the state of Roraima in northern Brazil, where the Yanomami region – the country’s largest indigenous reserve – is located.
The “happiness seekers” must go
Lula da Silva recently announced that the area is to be cleared of illegal fortune seekers and launched a full-scale police and military operation to curb exploitation and protect the indigenous population. The criminal gold diggers are accused not only of devastation of the rainforest, but also of murder and rape against Yanomami people.
As a further step in the struggle, the president has appointed Joênia Wapixana to lead the country’s agency for indigenous peoples, Funai (Fundação nacional dos povos indígenas). As Brazil’s first-ever indigenous female lawyer, she has made it her life’s work to fight injustice. She, if anyone, knows how difficult it is to fight when big and powerful interests are behind the enemy.
It has also proved difficult for the authorities to put a stop to the illegal activities, she states.
– Brazil still does not have a good approach to prevent the illegal gold trade, says Joênia Wapixana to the AFP news agency.
Seen as “maids”
And she doesn’t mince her words when it comes to the former president. Bolsonaro “encouraged the encroachment of indigenous lands, denied us our rights and contributed to discrimination against indigenous peoples, who were persecuted and subjected to crime,” she claims, according to AFP.
As a representative of the indigenous population, Joênia Wapixana says it is her mission to correct this. And she is used to tough times and ready to fight.
– In this country, women from the indigenous population are regarded as subservient maids.
She continues:
– But I am here to declare that we are part of this country and we want to be regarded as equals.
Five years ago, Joênia Wapixana was awarded the UN Human Rights Prize. In an interview in connection with the award, she underlined the importance of standing up for the rights of her people. Without land rights, indigenous peoples also have no healthcare, education or financial assets.
– The maintenance of indigenous land areas is therefore also a matter of human rights, said Joênia Wapixana to the UN human rights body OHCHR.
Facts
Joênia Wapixana
As the first female lawyer from Brazil’s indigenous population, Joênia Wapixana, born in 1973, is used to being in the thick of things. She was also the first Indigenous woman to become a member of Congress.
Another merit is that she has now, as the first person ever from the indigenous population, been appointed to lead Funai.
Funai, Brazil’s agency for the country’s indigenous peoples, was put on hold under right-wing nationalist former president Jair Bolsonaro – something left-wing leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva reversed after taking over as president in January this year.
One of Joênia Wapixana’s most important achievements is when she won a land dispute in Brazil’s Supreme Court, after first taking the case to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR).
Sources: Câmara dos deputados site, AFP and others.
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The Yanomami, the South American indigenous people
The Yanomami are a South American indigenous people who live in around 200 different communities in the Amazon rainforest.
In Brazil alone, their area covers around 96,000 square kilometers, an area equivalent to more than two Denmarks. They also live in southern Venezuela.
In the early 1990s, the Yanomami received constitutionally protected exclusive rights to the region in Brazil. Even in Venezuela there are legal formulations in their favor. But the problem is that in isolated and hard-to-reach jungle areas, many ignore the law, and the authorities normally do not have a chance to stop all the environmental crimes that occur.
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