Brazil's military should evict illegal gold miners who have caused malnutrition and starvation in a region of the Yanomami reservation near the Venezuelan border, Indigenous Health Secretary Weibe Tapeba said on Tuesday.
Tapeba said 700 members of the community were going hungry, and health care is nonexistent due to the presence of well-armed gold miners that scared away medical workers from the health post and block people from bringing in supplies of medicine and food. Brazil's Supreme Court ordered the removal of the gold miners. But the previous government of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro never complied. Yanomami leaders said their pleas for help were ignored.
"This is a deliberate, man-made crisis, stoked by President Bolsonaro, who has encouraged the mass invasion and destruction of the Yanomami's lands," said Survival International director Fiona Watson.
Read more here.
