No law and order: The growing massacre over Brazilian land rights | Fusion
▻http://fusion.net/story/319654/in-brazil-land-disputes-are-growing-more-deadly
United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Vicky Tauli-Corpuz, made a visit to Brazil earlier this year and declared that the expansion of the agricultural frontier deeper into the Amazon had resulted in “open warfare” between farmers and indigenous groups, which are often the victims of this violence. Between 2003 and 2014, the Indigenous Missionary Council estimates that 754 indigenous people were killed in Brazil.
Aside from inciting land conflict, even when legally obtained, extractive industries have left their mark on the environment. Deforestation has slowed in recent years, but between August 2012 and July 2013, the state of Tocantins lost nearly 30 square miles of forest. The largest pressure, according to the state ministry of environment, is the expansion of soy plantations already prominent in neighboring states of Maranão and Bahia. Traditional communities that border such operations are affected by groundwater pollution and drifting chemicals used on the crops.
#assassinats #meurtres #peuples_autochtones #activistes #terres #foncier
