Carimbo de taquara Kaingang - Foto: Vladimir Kozak, 1955
Fonte: ISA-Instituto Socioambiental
OPEN LETTER
FOR THE DEMARCATION OF THE INDIGENOUS LANDS IN BRAZIL
We, the
traditional leadership of the Kaingang people, leaders, professionals, youth,
women, elders of the 305 Indigenous Peoples, who speak 274 languages and which
make up 0,4% of the national population, with the support of indigenous
organizations and pro-indigenous, of Brazilian citizens, of social movements
and organized civil society denounce the Brazilian state, its executive,
legislative and judicial powers for its 514 years of omission in favor of the
annihilation of Indigenous Peoples, the expropriation of our lands, and the
violation of our rights as human beings!
Rio Grande
do Sul is home to two of the greatest Indigenous Peoples in the country, making
up this province as the 10th in the country population-wise: the Guarani People
and the Kaingang People are, respectively, the 2nd and the 3rd biggest
populations of Indigenous Peoples in Brazil (IBGE Census, 2010).
The Kaingang are about 45 thousand people,
most of which live in Rio Grande do Sul province and own the smallest
indigenous lands of the country, confined in reductions of ancient traditional
lands that today correspond to more or less 1% of the province’s territory,
creating conflicts in which we defend our land’s right at the cost of lives
whose losses are not reported in the media and the individualized
criminalization of leaders that defend our collective rights constitutionally
guaranteed but disrespected in a daily basis.
The
insufficiency of our territories has endangered our physical and cultural
survival as Kaingang Peoples, whose language is under risk of extinction,
following the UNESCO’s Atlas of the World's languages in Danger of Disappearing
and the human development index that put the indigenous peoples as the segments
under situation of social risk and show the omission of the Brazilian state in
protecting the integrity of the Indigenous Peoples as distinct peoples, in
accordance with the article 8 of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous
Peoples.
We fight in
Brazil and abroad to get recognized our original right to land: a right that
precedes the existence of the Brazilian state, at the expense of hundreds and
thousands of indigenous lives, and we were successful: the Brazilian
Constitution and the ILO Convention 169 recognize our right to our indigenous
lands. A deadline of 5 years was established in 1988 and the year 1993 passed
without the regularization of the indigenous lands in Brazil. 21 years went by
and since then we have been fighting not to lose our recognized rights: we
denounce the legal back-tracking currently in place the national Congress to
eliminate our territorial rights and to bolster the interest of the
agribusiness.
We
emphasize that the current government has the smallest indicators of indigenous
lands’ demarcation since the military dictatorship and that the Brazilian
judiciary, legislative and executive powers have violated the legality
principle that mandates the state to respect and implement the right to
consultation of Indigenous Peoples likely to be affected by juridical,
political or administrative measures, through appropriate procedures and
respecting representative institutions, under good will, in accordance with the
ILO Convention 169.
We express
our concern with initiatives to restrict our lands’ rights, financed by the
agribusiness, as per the proposal to constitutional amendment 215, which
proposes the attribution to the legislative power activities that are
prerogatives of the executive power, in the directive n. 303 of the Federal
Attorney General's Office and all the legal and administrative initiatives
biased towards diminishing or suppressing the territorial rights of indigenous
peoples, in opposition to the spirit of the Federal constitution, the Indigenous
Peoples Law (n. 6.001 of 1973) in its article 2, IX and the Decree 1.775 of
1996 and in violation of the article 26 UN Declaration on the Rights of
Indigenous Peoples:
1.
Indigenous peoples have the right to the lands, territories and resources which
they have traditionally owned, occupied or other- wise used or acquired.
2.
Indigenous peoples have the right to own, use, develop and control the lands,
territories and resources that they possess by rea- son of traditional
ownership or other traditional occupation or use, as well as those which they
have otherwise acquired.
3. States
shall give legal recognition and protection to these lands, territories and
resources. Such recognition shall be conducted with due respect to the customs,
traditions and land tenure systems of the indigenous peoples concerned.
We denounce
the Brazilian government for each confrontation, for every death that has
occurred and is likely to occur for the disputes over immemorial lands,
demarcated by the blood of our peoples!
We demand
the compliance and the immediate implementation of our human rights previewed
in national and international legal frameworks in conducting Indigenous Peoples
related policies in Brazil. We demand that the Brazilian government promote,
with urgency, in consultation and with the full and effective participation of
indigenous peoples, a plan to regularize the indigenous lands in Brazil, with
the proactive participation of the Public Federal Ministry, to ensure the
compliance to the Federal Constitution of 1988, which recognizes the original
right of Indigenous Peoples to our traditional lands and in accordance with the
ILO Convention 169.
Due to the
absence of the Brazilian state in establishing a dialogue, we request to the
United Nations Organization a visit from the UN Special Rapporteur for the
Rights of Indigenous Peoples to Brazil, with a special attention the South and
Central West regions, as a matter of urgency and the presentation of a report
about the conflicts following the violations of human rights due to the delays
in land demarcation processes in indigenous lands to the next session of the UN
Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights
and the International Amnesty.
The Rio+20
final document is entitled “The future we want” and its paragraph 49 mentions the
importance of the implementation of the UN Declaration on the Rights of
Indigenous Peoples for sustainable development! Brazil intends to be one of the
greatest economies in the world: but where are the indigenous peoples in the
projects for the future of Brazil? What kind of future will we have if the
indigenous lands are the condition for our physical and cultural survival?
Our
leaders, our people and organizations have submitted documents, have also
conducted pacific manifestations, have traveled to Brasilia searching for
solutions for these conflicts and have always received empty promises that were
never fulfilled! Our leaders have been murdered and the medias do not even
report these daily homicides against indigenous peoples, while the responsibles
are not punished.
Thus, this
manifestation is a cry for help, to the urgent inquiry to human rights
violations and the immediate implementation of the appropriate measures:
judicial and administrative in favor of the survival and the future of our Peoples.
“As long as
we are alive, we will fight for our lands!”
(Chief Raoni Metuktire Kayapó).
Original blog post Personal Escritor
