Alert against the Green Desert Network
"Dear friends,
Many things happened after the 24th of January when we informed you about the violent action of the Federal Police against the Tupinikim and Guarani that happened on the 20th of January, in order to take them out of the 11,009 hectares of indigenous lands they demarcated and occupied in May 2005.
-The Indians, wounded by the Federal Police, had medical reports made at the Medical Legal Institute (Instituto Médico Legal - IML) in Vitória on 24th January. Photographs (IML1, 2 and 5) are attached where you can see once again what the Police did with them. On one of the pictures, you can see the plastered arm, broken by federal policemen, of Paulo Henrique de Oliveira, National Coordinator of the 2nd biggest indigenous organization in Brazil: APOINME. We attach also a report made by two supporters of the Indigenous struggle with several testimonies about the police action and more background information (Report of Fabio and Arlete about the operation).
-Over the past two weeks, hundreds and hundreds of copies of international solidarity messages, sent to the Brazilian authorities, have been received from abroad. The attention abroad for the police violence and the several irregularities involving the Judge decision (being now investigated by the Federal Public Prosecution Service) that motivated the police action, lead to the decision of the Royal House of Sweden to withdraw their financial investments from the Aracruz company. This news was also announced in the Brazilian media.
-On 28 January, Tupinikim and Guarani, helped by supporting groups and movements such as students and the MST, reconstructed during a whole day the (by Aracruz tractors) destructed indigenous village of Olho d'Água (see picture P1300007). The Tupinikim and Guarani are firm in their intention not to leave the area of 11,009 hectares, in spite of the fact that the canceling of the Federal Police operation on the same 20th of January in the afternoon (see our action alert from 24 January), got suspended afterwards, because the Court understood that the suspension of a decision that already had been executed (the houses were destructed, the Indians wounded, etc.) does not have effect! The Federal Public Prosecution Service in Espírito Santo is preparing a new appeal in which they demand the Federal Judge to give the Tupinikim and Guarani a right to occupy the area until a final decision on the demarcation is taken by the federal government.
-On 30 January, with the support of several supporting authorities, a delegation of 8 indigenous leaders had a 30-minutes meeting with President of the Republic Luíz Inácio Lula da Silva, at the Vitória Airport, at the end of a short visit of the President to the Espirito Santo State. Lula was impressed by the violence practiced against the Indians and promised that he would send the Minister of Justice Márcio Thomaz Bastos to talk directly with the Indians in order to solve the demarcation issue.
-Lula maintained his promise. On 9 February, an indigenous commission of 20 chiefs and leaders had a meeting of 1,5 hour with the Minister of Justice and the President of FUNAI, Mércio Pereira Gomes. The meeting was also attended by other authorities, such as the President of the Human Rights Commission of the National Parliament, Iriny Lopes, besides other members of parliament, authorities and representatives of NGOs. During the meeting the President of the FUNAI promised to publish next week the new study on the indigenous area (realized in November/December 2005), which aims to update and to complement in some aspects the already realized FUNAI-studies from the period 1994-1998. After publishing this report in the national state gazette, a legal period of 90 days starts during which any party (probably Aracruz) can challenge the report. After that, the legal department of FUNAI will evaluate the challenges during a legal period of 60 days and then, the report has to be handed over to the Minister of Justice within a legal period of 30 days for the official decision of declaring the lands indigenous or not. According to the prevision of the President of FUNAI, the declaration of the area as an indigenous land could be done by the Minister of Justice in July/August 2006 and the homologation by President Lula in November/December 2006. The Minister of Justice affirmed that President Lula has a firm commitment with the constitutional rights of indigenous peoples in Brazil, and in this special case with the demarcation of the Tupinikim and Guarani lands. He promised to do everything, as a Minister, to demarcate the lands as soon as possible, respecting the legal time periods of the demarcation procedure. He expects that the whole process (including homologation of the lands) will be concluded until the end of the year. He also promised to investigate thoroughly the violent federal police action from the 20th of January, based on the complaints that were presented to him by the Indians and other testimonies.
-Finally, the Judge Camilo José de Ávila Couto of the 2nd Civil and Commercial Court of Aracruz, who in November 2005 had forbidden the supporters of the indigenous struggle to practice any 'perturbing or plundering' against Aracruz, increased the daily fine from 5,000 Brazilian real to 100,000 real (about 45,000 US dollars) for those who do not respect his decision. Besides this case, several indigenous leaders are being processed by the Federal Police. Also, the main regional media company A Gazeta is attacking the indigenous rights in a systematic way, giving much more support to the arguments of the Aracruz company. We understand this all as a strategy of criminalizing every time more the Indians and their supporters in order to weaken the struggle for the land demarcation. But the struggle will continue and we ask you to continue supporting it!"