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Friday, May 20, 2005

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International

Efforts against logging firms overturned

Jan Rocha

Indigenous people in remote rainforest face ``annihilation''

SAO PAOLO: Campaigners in the Brazilian Amazon fear a group of as yet uncontacted indigenous people in a remote corner of the rainforest face ``annihilation'' after a court overturned state efforts to protect them from logging firms.

The Supreme Court ruled that the company can continue logging in the densely forested area at the Pardo river in north-west Mato Grosso state, which borders Bolivia.

In his ruling, Judge Luiz Fux said the company Sulmap Sul Amazonia would suffer ``irreversible damage'' if logging was banned.

The group of hunter-gatherers, known by a neighbouring group as the ``little people'' was first sighted in the 1980s, but workers of the government's indigenous peoples protection agency, known as Funai, only found signs of a hurried departure in their abandoned villages when sent to contact them.

Making contact

Arrows, hammocks, baskets of nuts and footprints have been found, but no direct contact has been made, as the group flees into the forest.

Funai won a court order in 2001 banning entry to an area bigger than Greater London around the villages to allow time for friendly contact.

But armed loggers were seen inside the area in 2002, and a Funai camp was later burned down.

Clandestine roads were built as the loggers defied the ban, claiming that there were no longer indigenous peoples living in the area.

``These Indians will be annihilated if we don't act now,'' said Sidney Possuelo, head of a special unit established by Funai to contact and protect such groups from the aggressive advance of loggers, ranchers and settlers.

Prevent genocide

There are thought to be more than 40 such groups of isolated indigenous peoples across the Amazon region.

Another group of nine or 10 persons, living in four huts, was spotted recently in Rondonia state, also on the Bolivia border, during a government helicopter flight.

Rights group Survival International, which is campaigning to save the Rio Pardo peoples from loggers, has called on the Government to fulfil its constitutional duty to protect them, saying the ``the annihilation of a tribe, however small, is genocide.''

Logging firms, both domestic and foreign, are spearheading the advance of other business interests deeper into the undisturbed forest.

Deforestation is running at record levels as a result.

Official figures put last year's total deforestation at 10,000 square miles, larger than Wales. Some Government analysts believe that even this is an underestimate. —

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