Indigenous peoples of the Amazon ask in Germany for the defense of their territory

Berlin (Germany), Sep 20 (EFE) - Jairo Saw Mundurukú and Alessandra Korap, representatives of the Mundurukú Indigenous people, called Friday for Germany to put pressure on the Brazilian government to stop illegal mining, deforestation, agribusiness, and the construction of large infrastructure projects such as hydroelectric plants that threaten the integrity of the Amazon rainforest.



CAMERA: JOSÉ MANZANEQUE

FOOTAGE AND SOUNDBITES OF THE INDIGENOUS LEADER (CACIQUE) OF THE COMMUNITY AND VILLAGE OF SAWRE ABOY; AND ALESSANDRA KORAP, ACTIVIST OF THE MUNDURUKU COMMUNITY.

Translation: “I think the best way we have to fight against these big threats is to organize ourselves, not politically, but organizing ourselves, preparing young people to defend their territory, to have a discussion with the non-indigenous society and to say that the territory is important, that we should not destroy it, that we should respect our nature, that the forest or the rivers, the animals, the very people who occupy the territory, we should pay attention to them, so I think preparing young people for the struggle, to guarantee their rights, is this way, organizing themselves, keeping strong their traditionalism and saying that we have to protect it. So that would be the world, the moment, one side to be able to defend their space, their right, as an indigenous person living in the jungle with the animals. So it has to be protected. So this is one of the most practical ways to organize politically. There are associations, and there are leaders, who are followed by young people, women, and children. They need to be protected. So they need to speak and say, we already exist, we are here, we are also human beings, we are lives, the forest gives you life, and you want to destroy it, so you have to speak in this way, this is one of the ways, to show that we are important, not only in our space, not only with the forest, you are also very important for the society, not indigenous, right? That they can look at us with respect and with rights.”

Translation 2: “Look, the first time this threat came up was in 2019, at the beginning of Bolsonaro's government. In the beginning, when he wanted to paralyze the demarcation, when he said that the indigenous people needed to take the time to demarcate the indigenous lands, then we began to see that it was a threat to us, that it was the president himself, then we held several meetings to make several complaints in Brasilia, and when I arrived at my house, they only took the folder, the documents, the flash drive card, that's all, that's all, they took my voice with all the documents I had from our meeting in Brasilia and the flash drive, that's all, and then the memory card. And then they took it, when I was in 2022, coming back from a complaint against the COP, the world conference on my environment, we realized and I also realized that they had broken into my house again, once again. So we have no security. The state says we have security, but we don't have security from the state. So security is usually the same, it's our own, how to make our security.”