The Federal Police (PF) claims that it arrested, on Thursday night (5), Eliézio Monteiro Nerj, a gold prospector wanted by the courts for having been part of a massacre against Yanomami indigenous people in 1993.
The episode, known as the Haximu massacre, left 22 indigenous people dead in the Parima mountain range, in the Roraima region near the Venezuelan border.
By the middle of that year, tensions between garimpeiros and indigenous people were high. In July, the miners took advantage of the fact that the men from the Haximu village had left the site to participate in a tradition and attacked.
The indigenous people (among them, only an adult man, women children and even a baby) were killed by gunshots and machetes.
Nerj’s arrest, almost 30 years after the incident, was the result of a PF operation with the state’s Military Police. Nerj was found at the bus station in the city of Boa Vista.
The episode has been considered a crime of genocide by the Justice since 2006, when the Federal Supreme Court (STF) decided to do so. He was also convicted of smuggling and illegal mining.
In total, 24 miners were accused of having participated in the massacre. The complaint was made in 1993, by the prosecutors of the Federal Public Ministry in Roraima, Carlos Frederico Santos, Franklin Rodrigues da Costa and Luciano Mariz Maia.
The crime was tried three years later, in 1996, and only five, among them Nerj, were convicted. The rest, no, for lack of evidence — about many of them, we didn’t even know their names, only nicknames.
Currently, the tension with the violence of miners against indigenous people is escalating again in the state.
On April 25 this year, local indigenous leaders denounced that members of illegal mining had kidnapped, raped and murdered a 12-year-old girl.
The accusation was made by the Condisi-YY (District Council for Yanomami and Ye’kwana Indigenous Health), but a statement issued by the federal government states that an investigation carried out by the Federal Public Ministry, Funai and the Special Secretariat for Indigenous Health found no evidence of murder or rape.
Members of the Federal Police, in turn, told the Sheet that the disappearance of indigenous people on Yanomami land has nothing to do with the aggression of miners.
According to interlocutors, police officers who were with people from the community shortly before the indigenous people left the place stated that the departure had taken place voluntarily.
The investigation into the case remains ongoing. When the task force of public agencies went to the Araçá community to investigate the death of the 12-year-old girl, they found the place completely empty and some houses burned.
A report by the Hutukara Associação Yanomami entity also points out that the Araçá community is “on the way to disappearing” and that part of it does not produce its own food, which increases the vulnerability of the indigenous people. In addition, the introduction of alcoholic beverages and diseases by mining is another threat.
Araçá is close to the Palimiu region, where, in 2021, several indigenous communities were attacked by armed miners.
