Brazil declares medical emergency after hundreds of rainforest deaths

The government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has airlifted 16 starving Yanomami tribal people from their rainforest settlements, having declared a medical emergency after hundreds of Yanomami children died from malnutrition.

The indigenous people live in a reserve in Brazil’s northern state of Roraima.

The BBC reports that Lula has accused his predecessor, far-right Jair Bolsonaro, of committing genocide against the rainforest tribe. The deaths are linked to water pollution caused by mining and logging in the densely forested area, where food insecurity is rife.

At the weekend, Lula visited Roraima, which borders Venezuela and Guyana, following reports of severe malnutrition among Yanomami children and said he was ‘shocked’ by what he found.

He said later: ‘More than a humanitarian crisis, what I saw in Roraima was genocide: a premeditated crime against the Yanomami, committed by a government insensitive to suffering. I came here to say we are going to treat our indigenous people as human beings.’

According to the BBC, an estimated 28 000 indigenous people live in the Yanomami reserve. They hunt, practise small-scale slash-and-burn agriculture and live in small, scattered, semi-permanent villages.

In his four years in power, Bolsonaro often criticised the size of the indigenous reserves and promised to open some of them to agriculture and mining. His government weakened environmental protections, and critics said his rhetoric emboldened illegal activity in the region.

Today, some 20 000 illegal miners are estimated to operate inside the Yanomami reserve, which is rich in gold, diamonds and minerals. In 2021, miners in the area opened fire on the Yanomami using automatic weapons.

The new Lula government says more than 500 indigenous children have died in the past few years from drinking water contaminated with mercury, which is directly linked to illegal gold mining.

Sonia Guajajara, the Minister of Indigenous Peoples, said: ‘We must hold the previous government accountable for allowing this situation to get worse to the point where we find adults weighing like children, and children reduced to skin and bones.’

The BBC reports that, besides airlifting some of the most seriously ill members of the tribe, Brazilian authorities announced that the health ministry would create a field hospital and send supplies and health professionals to the area.

[Image: https://www.survivalinternational.org/tribes/yanomami]