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A senior expert on isolated Amazonian tribes in Brazil was killed by an arrow that struck him in the chest as he approached an indigenous group, friends and a police witness said Thursday.
Rieli Franciscato (56), had spent his career as a civil servant in the government’s indigenous affairs agency Funai, working to establish reservations to protect the tribes of Brazil.
On Wednesday, while approaching a hitherto uncontacted indigenous group, he was struck by an arrow over his heart in the forest near the Uru Eu Wau Wau reserve in the western Brazilian state of Rondonia, near the border with Bolivia.
“He screamed, took the arrow out of his chest, ran 50 meters and collapsed, lifeless,” said a policeman accompanying the expedition in an audio posted on social networks.
The Kaninde Ethno-Environmental Defense Association that it helped found in the 1980s said the indigenous group did not have the ability to distinguish between friend or foe from the outside world.
His death comes at a time when Brazil’s indigenous peoples are under increasing threat from invasions by illegal land grabbers, loggers and gold miners, emboldened by the policies of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, who wants to develop the Amazon. and reduce the size of indigenous people. Bookings.
“We are puzzled by so many deaths in this Brazil that no longer respects indigenous rights,” said Ivaneide Cardozo, a friend of Franciscato and co-founder of the Kaninde association.
Sydney Possuelo, the main authority on Brazil’s remaining isolated tribes and a former head of Funai, said Bolsonaro had made good on his campaign promise to destroy the agency that is meant to defend the rights of indigenous peoples.
Possuelo said the government had withdrawn funds from Funai and left her without the necessary security personnel at her isolated posts, just as the increase in land invasions increases the risk of violent clashes.
Brazil’s presidency did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Bolsonaro has repeatedly proposed the need to integrate indigenous people, whom he described as living “like cavemen,” into the broader Brazilian society.
“Rieli was a calm, methodical and soft-spoken man who knew the dangers very well, but he was alone and went to ask the police to accompany him,” Possuelo said. The presence of the police, Possuelo explained, could have triggered the attack. – Reuters
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