Brazil declared an emergency when reports of children dying from starvation and other illnesses brought on by illegal gold mining arose in Yanomami territory, the country’s largest indigenous reservation.
Former president Jair Bolsonaro has received criticism from Lula for the terrible state of the Yanomami people. The government issued a decree on Friday in an effort to bring back health services for them.
According to information obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, 570 Yanomami children died from preventable diseases, the majority of which were malnutrition, malaria, diarrhoea, and malformations brought on by mercury used by illegal gold miners, according to a report by the journalism platform Sumauma on Amazon (FOIA).
After photos of children and elderly men and women with their thin ribs were made public, Lula paid a visit to Yanomami health centre in Boa Vista in Roraima state on Saturday. ‘More than a humanitarian crisis, what I saw in Roraima was genocide: a premeditated crime against the Yanomami, committed by a government insensitive to suffering,’ Lula said on Twitter.
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