“Horrific: Ranchers attack and mutilate Indians who demanded their land back”
4 May, 2017
Thirteen Brazilian Indians have been hospitalized after a brutally violent attack by men armed with machetes in the Amazon. One man appears to have had his arms severed...The attack was in retaliation for the Gamela Indians’ campaign to recover a small part of their ancestral territory...invaded and destroyed by ranchers, loggers and land grabbers, forcing the Gamela to live squeezed on a tiny patch of land...in Maranhão...[,]...Brazil.  Powerful agribusiness interests – reportedly including the Sarney landowning family – have been in conflict with the tribe for some time. The family includes a former president of Brazil and a former governor of Maranhão state...[R]anchers gathered at a barbecue to get drunk, before surrounding the Gamela camp, firing guns, and then attacking with machetes, causing grievous injuries. Local police are reported to have stood by and allowed the attack to happen.The Gamela have received death threats in response to their attempts to return to their land. In a declaration released by Brazilian NGO CIMI, they said: “...If they kill us, we will just grow again, like seeds… Neither fear nor the ranchers’ bullets can stop us.”...Campaigners fear that the close ties between Brazil’s agribusiness lobby and the Temer government installed after the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff in 2016 could lead to further genocidal violence and racism...