Beatriz Matos will head committee on indigenous removal – 04/20/2023 – Cotidiano

Minister Luís Roberto Barroso, of the STF (Federal Supreme Court), accepted this Wednesday (20) a request to transfer the situation room on disintrusion (removal of those who are not originally from the demarcated area) in seven indigenous lands in Brazil, including the Yanomami.

During the Bolsonaro government, the room was under the umbrella of the GSI (Institutional Security Office), commanded by General Heleno, who even authorized the advance of mining in preserved areas of the Amazon.

Now, the body will pass to the Ministry of Indigenous Peoples and will be coordinated by the anthropologist Beatriz Matos, widow of the indigenist Bruno Pereira, murdered in the Javari Valley along with the English journalist Dom Phillips, in June 2022.

Currently, Matos holds the position of director of the Ministry’s Department of Territorial Protection and Isolated Indigenous Peoples and Recent Contact.

“We want to recover the initial purpose of the situation room, it should be an operational room, for exchanging information. Both sanitary barriers, but also territorial protection actions will be discussed, evaluated, monitored and articulated in it, with the presence of society civil society, the Ministry of Indigenous Peoples and Funai,” she said.

At the STF, the matter is dealt with in the records of an ADPF (Arguição de Descumprimento de Preceito Fundamental), authored by Apib (Articulação dos Povos Indígenas do Brasil) and political parties.

“The ministry will be at the center of decisions regarding the responses that the government has to give to this ADPF, ensuring that these actions are carried out in a respectful manner and in consultation with the indigenous peoples involved”, he added.

The change regarding the linkage of the situation room responded to a request from the Indigenous Peoples portfolio, made through the AGU (Advocacia Geral da União).

The situation room was created in 2020 and aims to support decision-making within the scope of ADPF 709, especially with regard to isolated and recently contacted peoples, the most vulnerable to invasions.

Bruno Pereira was head of the General Coordination of Isolated Indigenous Peoples and Recent Contact of Funai (National Foundation of Indigenous Peoples) when, in 2019, he asked for leave from the entity.

The indigenist said he was persecuted by Marcelo Xavier, president of Funai under Bolsonaro, and claimed that the body had been adopting an anti-indigenous policy.

Pereira then started working for Univaja (Union of Indigenous Peoples of the Javari Valley), the region to which he dedicated his career, having been head of the Ethno-environmental Protection Front in the area.

He was killed in 2022 by fishermen linked to drug trafficking in the region, when he returned from an expedition with local indigenous people – the crime trial has not yet been concluded.

ADPF 709 was filed in 2020, in the context of the pandemic, and called for the creation of sanitary barriers and strict restrictions to protect indigenous peoples from Covid-19, in addition to the expulsion of invaders from seven territories: Yanomami, Karipuna, Uru-EuWau-Wau , Kayapó, Araribóia, Munduruku and Trincheira Bacajá.

Barroso accepted the request and ordered the Union to carry out the removal of Indigenous Lands, which was not done by the Bolsonaro government.

The situation room was also created by determination of the minister and meets every 15 days. Its main focus is to provide operational entities with information, especially related to indigenous issues.

The operation to expel mining from the Yanomami Indigenous Land, underway since the beginning of this year, follows the minister’s decision — the government is now planning, together with the Federal Police, new actions to remove invaders from other Indigenous Lands that are within the scope of of ADPF 709.

“We have a first challenge, the Indigenous Lands listed in ADPF 709, which are our priority”, stated, in March, the director of the PF’s Amazon and Environment, Humberto Freire.

“Once the Yanomami operation is over, we are going to continue the removal operations. We have, in view of the ADPF 709 of the Federal Supreme Court, six more removals to be carried out this year”, said the Minister of Justice, Flávio Dino, also at the time .