In mid-January, Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva accused the country’s former president, Jair Bolsonaro, of facilitating genocide against the Indigenous Yanomami people, who live deep in the Amazon rainforest along the border of Venezuela and Brazil.
The Yanomami people lived in almost complete isolation until the 1980s, when gold was found in their territory. Over the decades since this discovery, some 40,000 illegal miners have edged their way in, spreading illnesses like tuberculosis and malaria and polluting rivers with mercury in their search for gold.
On January 20, Brazil’s Health Ministry declared a medical emergency in the territory. A reported 570 children have died of malnutrition and preventable diseases during the last four years of the Bolsonaro presidency, which Lula said actively ignored the illegal mining activities and ensuing humanitarian emergency.
Click for the full article at DW
