Indigenous Brazilians rally to demand land rights protection

International Desk: Thousands of indigenous Brazilians from across the country have rallied in the capital, Brasilia, to call authorities to protect their land rights.

Organisers of the annual "Free Land Camp" in Brasilia said more than 3,000 people reached the city this week to denounce what advocacy groups say is a continuing and unprecedented rollback of indigenous rights in the country.

"We are here to demand our rights," Jailson dos Santos, leader of the Kariri-Xoko tribe from Bahia, northeastern Brazil, told Al Jazeera from the protest outside the attorney general's office on Wednesday.

Indigenous people's right to their traditional lands is enshrined in Brazil's constitution. In practice, however, this right is rarely respected and their lands are often targeted by loggers, land grabbers and wildcat miners.

Since last year, experts say, an already dire situation got considerably worse with increased invasions of indigenous territories, anti-indigenous measures pushed by Brazil's powerful farming lobby and cuts to indigenous protection agencies.

"What we are seeing now is new phase of violent land grabbing and occupation of indigenous territories that are already demarcated," Cleber Buzatto, executive-secretary of Brazil's Indigenous Missionary Council (CIMI) said.

Last May, more than a dozen members of the Gamela tribe in Maranhao state were hospitalised after a vicious attack with guns and machetes by local ranchers.

Source: Al Jazeera



risingbd/April 26, 2018/Mukul