#illegal mining

"When President Lula da Silva took office this year in Brazil, many environmental and indigenous rights groups hoped he would fulfill campaign promises of better protection for the Amazon rainforest and the people who live there.

Nearly four months into his tenure and early signs are that Lula was telling the truth, as Brazilian police have evicted dozens of illegal gold miners from the Yanomami Reserve, an area the size of Portugal inhabited by around 35,000 [Indigenous people].

Illegally-mined gold accounts for around half of all the country’s exports, and a new Environment of the Amazon division of the federal police is seeking international assistance in building a first-rate structure for targeting the outside funding toward and sales from illegal gold mining.

Reuters says that so far, the new division has ousted nearly all miners from the area, including overseeing the destruction of 250 mining camps and 70 low-tech boats used for dredging. 48 planes and helicopters for smuggling the gold out of the reserve have been seized as well.

The police hope to use radioisotope technology and methods to be able to pinpoint the exact mineralogical makeup of illegally mined gold as a way of targeting it in the market even after it’s melted into ingots.

They also plan to remove miners from 6 other Amazon reserves this year, while setting up a permanent, floating police station on a river in the Yanomami Reserve.

At the moment, the Lula Administration is considering the best set of laws for tackling the problem. While 804 miners have been arrested in the raids, all were let go, and many others fled in the police advance.

Humberto Freire, from the new Amazon division, told Reuters he and his department hope to create a sophisticated electronic tax receipt for any transactions of precious metals to help pinpoint sales and distribution of suspected illegal bullion."

-via Good News Network, 3/23/23

René Amuan Santiago Tí remembers how, armed only with wooden spears, he and his companions disarmed a group of policemen as they drew their pistols, after they caught the officers escorting a barge full of illegal mining machinery. The guns went in the river.

Disarming the police officers was a risky move, but the members of the Charip, as the Indigenous guards of the Wampis Nation people are known, were confident that something was amiss.

Charip means lightning, and for the territorial defenders it symbolises the way they strike against invaders of their land along the Santiago River, in the far north of Peru on its Amazonian frontier with Ecuador.

The three police officers, who were detained alongside Ecuadorian and Peruvian nationals in the incident in April 2024, were moonlighting as hired guns for illegal goldminers and were hundreds of miles from where they were based in Piura, a coastal region of Peru.

The Wampis refused to release them until the government sent a high-level commission to address the problem of wildcat goldminers plundering and polluting their land.

A few days later, a military helicopter carrying the deputy interior minister and the high commissioner against illegal mining touched down in Villa Gonzalo. Thousands of Wampis people had assembled in the village, its Charip warriors adorned in war paint. They demanded respect for their territory and action to expel the invaders.

Nearly a year later, the Charip guardians – rather than the state – have exerted control. They use stop-and-search at a checkpoint to thin out the number of mining dredgers upriver, says Santiago Tí, leader of the band of less than a dozen men who work day and night.

“We welcome visitors but will not allow people who come to do us harm,” he says. “If they come to extract gold or destroy our forest, then we are fierce. We are very protective of our forest.”

The Wampis people face a conundrum. They are the only Indigenous people in Peru to have created their own territorial government – an act of self-determination and a response to the state’s absence in the northern reaches of Condorcanqui province in the Amazonas region.

But while they have shown resilience and organisation in confronting illegal miners, they do not have the firepower to take on the criminal gangs behind the gold rush that is reaching ever deeper into Amazon border regions, as the international gold price surpasses $3,000 (£2,300) an ounce this month, a record high.

“We are seeing how different criminal economies are expanding their presence, territorial control and political influence in the Amazon,” says Raphael Hoetmer, western Amazon programme director at the environmental group Amazon Watch. “Organised crime is becoming a major threat to the global climate.”

The autonomous territorial government of the Wampis Nation was formed in 2017, a 13,000 sq km (5,000 sq mile) stretch of mountain and lowland rainforest across the Santiago and Morona river basins, with a population of about 15,000 people in 22 titled communities.

The nation was created under international laws that recognise the self-determination of Indigenous people, such as the Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, which was enshrined in the Peruvian constitution.

River dredging for gold is prohibited in the territory, and the autonomous government has made clear its intention to seize and destroy any equipment found.

What the Charip members lack in resources, they make up for in spirit. From a wooden shed that resembles a birdwatching hide perched on the brow of a riverbank, they look out across the river. All vessels that pass – from canoes powered by puttering peque-peque motors to larger chalupas that carry passengers and goods – must stop to be inspected.

Each wears a donated bulletproof vest and carries a blackened nanki, a spear carved from tough chonta palm. One of them, Edgar Tí, is cordial as he inspects a boat that pulls up on the riverbank, registers the details on a clipboard, questions the driver and passengers, and checks for mining supplies such as plastic tubing, motor pumps or jerrycans of diesel. 

Miners caught for the first time get off with a warning, but the Charip mete out Indigenous justice to reoffenders. They lash them with an ishanga, a type of Amazon nettle, or tie them for five minutes to a tangarana tree. This tree has a symbiotic relationship with aggressive fire ants, which attack any perceived threat to their home.

Santiago Tí says the nettles and ant bites, despite being painful, are used in traditional medicine to treat aches and pains, including arthritis. But chastised miners do not appreciate the punishment and several of the young men say they have received threats on instant messaging apps.

Older leaders, such as Alfonso Awananch Flores, the nation’s director of environment and territorial control, have been threatened, too. He says he avoids travelling to the larger towns since he was briefly abducted and interrogated.

“Without territory, we are not Wampis people,” says Flores, 45. That is why, he argues, they have strict management of their territorial autonomy and “cannot allow an activity that destroys our land, pollutes our river and poisons our fish”.

“We don’t need the state’s permission to declare our self-autonomy; we have been here for 7,000 years,” he says.

“We don’t need their recognition either. We have the right to become a territorial government.”

But they do need the armed forces to crack down on the dredgers, Flores admits, as the division between those opposed to mining and those who favour the illegal activity has split communities.

“We don’t want to create conflicts between families. That’s why we want the state to enforce the law,” he says.

Teófilo Kukush, the pamuk, or leader of the Wampis Nation, says miners are using children as “human shields” on dredgers to prevent the police and navy destroying the craft. “They pay the parents in communities to use their children,” says Kukush, who wears a red and yellow macaw feather crown signalling his status.

He is calling on the government to declare a state of emergency in the Santiago River and expel the miners.

Venezuela, Amazonas, Illegal Mining, Virgilio Trujillo Arana, Indigenous, Human Rights, Nicolas Maduro, Wladimir Padrino,

Indigenous leader who defended the Amazon shot dead by Noticias de Nueva Esparta Indigenous leader who defended the Amazon shot dead by Noticias de Nueva Esparta PUERTO ORDAZ, Venezuela, July 1 – A Venezuelan indigenous leader who was an opponent of armed groups and illegal mining was shot dead on Thursday in the Amazonas state capital, a non-governmental organization and three people with…

On 11 September 2020, human rights defender Roberto Carlos Pacheco was shot dead by unknown attackers. Pacheco had received death threats since 2012 linked to his activism against illegal mining in the Tambopata Reserve, Madre de Dios region, in the Amazon. 

Having received insufficient protection measures from authorities, his family believe they are in danger, particularly Demetrio Pacheco, his father, and Vice President of the Tambopata Reserve Management Committee. 

We call on the Public Prosecutor to investigate this murder, bring suspects to justice and protect the Pacheco family.

Since 2011 the Tambopata Reserve Management Committee has worked to end illegal mining and its negative effects on the environment. The threats and attacks against their members and other human rights defenders in the area began in 2012. 

On 19 November 2015, environmental defender Alfredo Ernesto Vracko Neuenschwander was killed. He had received several death threats after a complaint against illegal mining in La Pampa area, in the Madre de Dios region. According to local human rights organizations, even though the victim’s family has identified those allegedly responsible, no progress has been made on the investigations. 

Demetrio Pacheco told Amnesty that his son Roberto Carlos Pacheco suffered three incidents of attacks and death threats. In March, unknown attackers beat and threatened him at gunpoint and a knife. Later that month, unknown individuals threatened him with a gun to his mouth and destroyed some of his personal property. Later that year, a bullet was left on his dining room table.

 All these threats were reported to the authorities. Nevertheless, authorities did not make progress to identify those responsible or effectively protect Roberto Carlos Pacheco. 

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