|
 London-based Survival International, an organization dedicated to defend the human rights of tribal peoples, is denying this Tuesday, June 24, that it or Funai, the Brazilian government agency in charge of Indians, misled the media over pictures of uncontacted Indians from Brazil painted in red threatening an overflying plane with their arrows.
The British newspaper The Observer claimed on June 22 that it has now "emerged" that the uncontacted tribe whose photos received worldwide publicity were neither "lost," nor "undiscovered" nor "unknown."
Other newspapers that have picked up the article have gone further and said that the story was a "hoax."
The story is not a hoax, says Survival, and none of those involved in working to protect these Indians' rights have ever claimed they were "undiscovered," the group adds.
In response to the allegations, Survival International's director Stephen Corry issued the following statement:
"The Observer article claims to "reveal" that the tribe photographed was neither "lost" nor "unknown". The reality is that neither Survival nor the Brazilian government claimed they were:
* When Survival published the photos, we quoted José Carlos dos Reis Meirelles, the Brazilian official who released them, saying, "We did the overflight to show their houses, to show they are there..." As Mr Meirelles said when the Brazilian government released the photos, the Indians' territory has been monitored for twenty years.
* These Indians are in a reserve expressly set aside for the protection of uncontacted tribes: they were hardly "unknown"!
* A glance at Survival's publications would also "reveal" that we have been campaigning for the protection of the uncontacted Indians of this region for more than twenty years.
"What is, and remains, true, is that so far as is known these Indians have no peaceful contact with outsiders. The publication of the pictures has pushed the Peruvian government into investigating their plight, a huge step forward given that just a few months ago Peru's President publicly questioned whether uncontacted Indians exist at all.
"This latest controversy reveals more about media attitudes than it does about isolated tribal peoples. Some journalists apparently don't want to recognize that there are in fact many uncontacted tribes around the world - we estimate about 100 - which, whilst not "lost", simply reject contact with the outside world. Given the massacres and atrocities so many of them have experienced, it's a perfectly sensible attitude."
Contact with the outside world has been a disaster for the Brazilian Indigenous peoples. While there were, by some accounts, about 5 million Indians when the Portuguese arrived in Brazil in 1500, today the Indian population has dwindled to around 350,000.
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
Brazil received a huge boost in its international image with its selection as the host of the 2016 Olympics, but it was really just the cherry on top of the overall recognition of the country's ascension to the ranks of one of the world's most important countries. Now, as it finally takes its place on the world scene, there has been a great deal of concern about what kind of image Brazil hopes to project, now that the world is really paying attention. 
The only good thing to say about the visit to Brazil of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, on Monday November 23, is that it was mercifully short and lasted less than 24 hours. Ahmadinejad had his picture taken being hugged by president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva who gave him a warm welcome and said Iran had every right to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. 
The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. The Northeast of Brazil has historically been a place of encounter and mixing between peoples. For millenia groups of indigenous people fished, farmed, migrated and sometimes fought along this large, fertile area. 
The Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy. 
On July 4, 2006, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Caracas to sign the protocol for the entrance of Venezuela into the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). After two and a half years, the protocol was approved by the legislative bodies of Argentina and Uruguay, and as of now it may be only days away from being ratified by the continent's economic megalith, Brazil. 
Some sectors of the fight against AIDS have suggested that Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, committed genocide through his absence from the fight against the illness in his country throughout his two terms. 
One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in São Paulo and other metropolis. 
On November 7, 2009 a few friends and I had an opportunity to take a look inside a Brazilian jail outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. We were able to take some amateur footage of our experience on video (see link below). It's no surprise, of course, that the typical Brazilian jail lacks some of the functionality of those in North America or Europe, but our experience that day was quite shocking. 
Depletion of the Amazon Rainforest is not a new concern facing environmentalists, biologists, ecologists, and a growing number of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. For decades they have feared for the fate of the world's most biologically diverse and species-rich hothouse. 
Geisy Arruda made history this week in Brazil, but for all the wrong reasons. What began as a poorly planned fashion statement has become a worldwide tale. Geisy decided to wear a pink mini-dress to her private college in São Paulo state, and after that, all hell broke loose.
It did take a long time for them to figure it out,eh?