A group of armed men working for miners approached Funai (National Indian Foundation) officials at the Jandiatuba River protection base, in the Indigenous Land of Vale do Javari, in Amazonas.
The case took place last Saturday (16), just over a month after the murder of indigenist Bruno Pereira and English journalist Dom Phillips, who disappeared in the region.
The report of the approach is contained in an internal official letter from Funai, to which the Sheet had access, and alert for the presence of paramilitary groups in the area. The case was also recorded in a report by the NGO Univaja (União dos Povos Indígenas do Vale do Javari).
According to the foundation’s document, the employees “were surprised by a group of armed men questioning the number of servers” working at the site.
The servers, according to the record, felt threatened and coerced and reported the facts to the higher authorities. In response, Funai requested support from the Armed Forces for the region.
“The armed group works together with the gold mining ferries, which operate in several locations along this river”, says the official letter, which emphasizes that in the last five years there has been a “recrudescence of mining activities along the bed of the Jandiatuba , including the involvement of heavily armed paramilitary groups”.
The case is one of a series of episodes of violence registered in the region in recent years, which culminated in the death of Bruno Pereira and Dom Phillips.
According to the investigation, the two were murdered by fishermen in the region, who confessed to the crime, while traveling in another part of the Indigenous Land, on the Itacoaí River, towards the city of Atalaia do Norte.
Since then, according to reports obtained by the Sheet in a reserved way, the climate in the region remains tense.
Servers and leaders ask that the local security forces be permanently reinforced, which has not yet happened, as a way of guaranteeing the action of indigenists and the protection of indigenous people in the territory that has the highest concentration of isolated peoples in the world. .
According to Univaja, a Funai operation earlier this year registered 19 mining rafts in activity near the base of the Jandiatuba River, where the team of servers was approached by the armed group.
This mining route, according to the entity, is based in the city of São Paulo de Olivença, which is more than 168 km from the city of Atalaia do Norte.
The ferries were identified about 30 km away from places with uncontacted indigenous peoples. On the way between them and the indigenous people along the Jandiatuba River is the Funai base that was threatened.
In this operation, 14 points of illegal extraction were identified and it was recorded that “people operating the mining rafts on the Jandiatuba River were carrying firearms (16 and 12 calibers)”, according to Univaja.
Indigenous people report fear on the paths they need to take along the rivers. Those who travel along the rivers in the region, say leaders, seek to make as few stops as possible along the way.
On the 8th, the Federal Police arrested the suspect of being the mastermind of the murder of the duo, a man known as Colombia, who has a commercial fishing relationship with one of the confessed murderers: Amarildo da Costa de Oliveira, aka Pelado.
The PF investigates the suspect’s true identity. The documents initially presented by him were Brazilian, with the name Rubens Vilar Coelho.
The main line of investigation of the crime so far is that the fishermen are involved in illegal fishing in the Vale do Javari indigenous land in commercial relations with traffickers in the border area. The PF is investigating whether Colombia is involved in drug trafficking.
In addition to Pelado and Colombia, they have also been arrested for involvement in the case of Oseney da Costa Oliveira, known as Dos Santos, and Jefferson da Silva Lima, known as Pelado da Dinha.
