The Khadia were evicted from their homeland inside Similipal Tiger Reserve in December 2013. They are now living in dire conditions under plastic sheets and have not received the compensation they were promised.

© Survival International

Survival has received disturbing reports that several tribal villages are facing imminent eviction from Tiger Reserves in Odisha in eastern India, despite the villagers’ desperate appeal to stay on the land and to involve them in protecting the forest.

Testimony obtained by Survival shows that tribes in Similipal Tiger Reserve, who have been living with the forest’s wildlife for generations, are determined to stay on their land, but have been facing years of harassment and pressure from forest guards to force them out of the reserve.

A Munda man from Jamunagarh, one of the villages slated for eviction, told Survival, ‘We are very much dependent on the forest…We don’t have any conflict with the wildlife. We don’t hunt or cut down trees. If we leave we will face a lot of hardship… Please don’t displace us!’

In potential breach of the law, wildlife authorities in Odisha are determined to clear ‘core areas’ inside Tiger Reserves of all human habitation. Three out of six villages have already been removed from Similipal and eviction plans are currently underway in the neighboring Satkosia Tiger Reserve.

Two Munda men from Jamunagarh village have launched a desperate appeal to remain on their land inside Similipal Tiger Reserve. 

© Survival International

During the most recent eviction from Similipal in December 2013, 32 families of the Khadia tribe were moved to a resettlement village outside of Similipal and only received a fraction of the compensation they were promised. Sheltering under plastic sheets on a tiny patch of land, the tribe is now entirely dependent on government handouts for their survival.

Local media reports heralded the December eviction as a ‘major success’ which will make further relocations ‘easy’. But Munda from Jamunagarh were horrified by conditions at the resettlement site, saying, ’We have been there. Seeing their condition made my heart cry. Please don’t displace us.’

According to Indian law, the villagers’ consent needs to be obtained and their claims to their forest land processed before such resettlements can go ahead. But their rights are ignored and communities are worn down with harassment and promises of money, food, livestock and land – most of which never materialises.

As the original conservationists, tribal peoples inhabit the world’s most biologically diverse regions – and it is often because they have protected their fragile environments that the wildlife has managed to survive. But India’s authorities seem intent on creating human-free zones inside tiger reserves around the nation.

Survival’s Director Stephen Corry said today, ‘Tribal peoples are usually the best conservationists. In spite of this, in many places around the world they are being illegally evicted from their lands in the name of ‘conservation’. Nowhere is this more blatant than in reserves where people who have lived alongside wildlife for generations are kicked out to make way for busloads of tourists and the roads and infrastructure they demand. It’s not about conservation, it’s about others profiting from tribal lands.’

Notes to editors:
- Similipal was declared a tiger reserve in 1973. In several evictions between 1987 and 2013, three out of six villages were removed from Similipal’s core zone. The remaining three villages Jamunagarh, Kabatghai and Bakua are currently resisting eviction.
- A Survival researcher who recently visited the area is available for interview

Much of the Khanty's land has already been devastated by oil and gas companies. Now legislation is being weakened – making it much harder for communities to protect their land from exploitation.

© Sophie Grig/Survival

The reindeer-herding Komi-Izhemtsi people in western Siberia have rejected the takeover of their land for oil exploration and drilling by Russian oil-giant LUKOIL. They are demanding that the company suspends oil exploration, production and transport in their territory until their demands are met.

The Izhemtsi are a semi-nomadic reindeer herding people living in the Komi republic of Russia, just west of the Ural mountains. The Izhemtsi were angered by the discovery of several oil rigs on the edge of one of their villages in February. The rigs had been built without the agreement, or even knowledge, of the local community.

The communities are also objecting to what they see as LUKOIL’s inadequate ‘clean up’ operation following an oil spill in March – the spilt oil was ignited. Communities 10 km away from the spill reported seeing plumes of black smoke from the fire for two days.

Fifteen Komi-Izhemtsi communities have issued a declaration stating, ‘We, Komi-Izhemtsi, are indigenous people and this is our land. We are no longer willing to tolerate the predatory exploitation of our mineral resources and the environmental irresponsibility of LUKOIL. We must become equal partners in the implementation of any industrial projects in our lands’.

Meanwhile, south-east of Komi, in the Khanty-Mansiisk region of Siberia, home to the Khanty and Mansi tribes, the regional parliament is seeking to weaken the legislation that protects the tribes’ land rights. The lands of many Khanty and Mansi communities had previously been protected, making it harder for oil and gas companies to enter the land without the permission of the tribes and without fulfilling a number of environmental obligations.

However, under the new system, the conservation requirement will be removed, opening the tribes’ lands up to greater exploitation and leaving them even more vulnerable to manipulation and pressure by the companies.

Police break up road blockade near Bagua, Peru, June 5th

© Thomas Quirynen

Fifty-three people go on trial in Peru today, charged in connection with violent clashes between indigenous protesters and police five years ago that left thirty-three dead.

The violence erupted in June 2009 after more than 50 days of nationwide protests led by Peru’s Amazon Indians over government plans to strip the Indians of their rights, and open up the Amazon to oil drilling and mining.

The clashes took place in Peru’s northern Amazon town of Bagua, after police confronted indigenous protesters who had peacefully blockaded a highway at a place known as “Devil’s Bend” for almost two months.

Twenty-three police officers, five Indians and five civilians were killed and more than 200 injured during the incident, according to a report by Peru’s Ombudsman. Unofficial reports have claimed the death toll was much higher.

Amongst those charged is Alberto Pizango, the president of Peru’s Amazon Indian Organization AIDESEP. The prosecution has called for Pizango to be imprisoned for life for “inciting violence”.

Since the clashes, several of the government’s controversial decrees have been repealed. In 2011, Peru’s President Ollanta Humala approved a law designed to guarantee indigenous peoples’ right to free, prior and informed consent to any projects affecting them and their lands.

However, since then the government has approved a controversial expansion of the massive Camisea gas project, even though it will penetrate deep into the territory of uncontacted Indians.

Peru’s government has been heavily criticized by both indigenous people and families of the deceased police officers for its failure to prevent the violence.

No police officers have yet been brought to trial.

Read Survival’s eyewitness report of the Bagua killings here.

Hundreds of Brazilian Indians are protesting against the World Cup

© Agencia Brasil

Hundreds of Brazilian Indians are protesting against the World Cup this week, marching in the streets of Brasília and around the capital’s Mané Garrincha football stadium, calling for their lands and lives to be protected.

Yesterday Indians brandishing bows and arrows and carrying signs reading ‘FIFA NO. DEMARCATIONYES!’ were teargassed by police. Watch a video clip here.

There is mounting anger at the government’s failure to recognize and protect their lands, vital for their survival, while spending millions of dollars on hosting the World Cup.

The protestors who are from several tribes have forced FIFA to close the stadium, and to cancel its trophy display.

A delegation of 18 indigenous protestors met the Minister of Justice yesterday. Indigenous leader Sonia Guajajara, national coordinator of the Association of Indigenous Peoples (APIB), said, ‘We are here to show that without our land, we are chained up. We are imprisoned. We are here to demand our rights.’

The Guarani tribe, Brazil’s largest, suffers extremely high malnutrition and suicide rates as their land has been stolen to make way for vast sugar cane plantations. Their leaders are frequently targeted and killed by gunmen acting for the landowners.

They are calling for their land to be demarcated as a matter of urgency before more lives are lost, and for the cancellation of a series of draft bills which, if passed into law, would drastically weaken their, and other tribes’, control over their lands. Those in the Amazon are calling for a halt to the many hydro-electric dams being built on their land.

Earlier this year, Nixiwaka Yawanawá, an Amazon Indian from western Brazil, greeted the World Cup trophy on its arrival in London with a T-shirt reading ‘BRAZIL: STOPDESTROYINGINDIANS’.

Brazil is home to more uncontacted tribes than anywhere else in the world. They are the country’s most vulnerable people and face extinction if their lands are not protected. Survival is calling on Brazil to protect their land and remove all invaders, as has recently been achieved with the Awá, Earth’s most threatened tribe.

In the run up to the FIFA World Cup, Survival is highlighting ‘The dark side of Brazil’. Click here to find out more about the situation of Brazilian Indians and the government’s attacks on their rights to their land.

Survival International Director Stephen Corry denounces Jimmy Nelson's portrayal of tribal peoples as ‘hubristic baloney’.

© Jimmy Nelson/teNeues

The work of famed photographer Jimmy Nelson, creator of coffee-table book “Before They Pass Away”, has been attacked in a new exposé by Survival International Director Stephen Corry as ‘hubristic baloney’ which presents a false and damaging picture of tribal peoples.

Nelson writes that his recent $150 book of “portraits” of tribal people was motivated by the desire to “search for ancient civilizations… and document their purity in places where untouched culture still exists”. The “cultures” he found are supposedly “unchanged for thousands of years”.

But Corry denounces the work as a photographer’s fantasy, bearing little relationship either to how the people pictured look now, or to how they’ve ever appeared.

The photos of Waorani girls from Ecuador, for example, portray them shorn of the clothes that contacted Waorani routinely wear, and wearing “fig” leaves to protect their modesty, which they have never done (previous generations of Waorani women wore a simple waist string). Corry writes that Nelson not only presents a fictionalized portrait of tribal people, but glosses over the genocidal violence to which many of the tribes pictured are being subjected, and even pretends that such tribes can be “saved” from the “inevitability” of “passing away” simply by being photographed.

The photos of Waorani girls from Ecuador show them wearing ‘fig’ leaves to protect their modesty, which they have never done.

© Jimmy Nelson/teNeues

Corry said today, "Given how much publicity Jimmy Nelson’s book has had, I think it’s important to expose the work for the damaging fantasy it is, because it ignores the crimes being committed against these peoples in the name of ‘progress’. No mention, for example, in the description of Ethiopia’s Mursi tribe, of the forced relocation, beatings, assaults and disappearances to which they’re being subjected.

“No mention, in the description of Tibetans, of China’s brutal oppression. No mention of the estimated 100,000 Papuans who have died since Indonesia’s ruthless occupation. No, the tribes are simply, inevitably, ‘passing away’. That’s dangerous claptrap which plays into the hands of all those who want them to ‘pass away’ as quickly as possible.”

Notes to Editors:
- Read the full article in the US journal Truthout: www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/23986-turning-a-blind-eye-to-pure-old-vibrations
- Nelson’s photos are currently being exhibited at the Camera Work gallery in Berlin
- Jimmy Nelson’s website: www.beforethey.com
- “Before They Pass Away” was published in English, German and French by teNeues in 2013

Valmir Guarani was kidnapped, tied to a tree in a forest, blindfolded, and tortured.

© Sarah Shenker/Survival

A young Brazilian Indian leader was assaulted on Monday by four armed men, despite being under the care of a government protection program since he witnessed the murder of his father-in-law.

Valmir Guarani Kaiowá, of the Guarani tribe, was kidnapped, tied to a tree in a forest, blindfolded, and tortured. He managed to escape and said, “They tied me up and told me that I was going to die and that no one would ever find me. They put a bitter liquid in my mouth and told me to swallow it. Then, they fired several shots by my ears and I couldn’t hear any more… then they left in their car.”

Valmir’s late father-in-law, Nísio Gomes, was killed by masked gunmen in 2011, having led his community back to part of their ancestral land which had been stolen from the Indians and occupied by a cattle ranch.

In 2012, 18 men were arrested in connection with the murder, including the owner of a ‘private militia’ security firm which has since been closed down. Some of the men are believed to have been released.

Valmir is a key witness, and continues to push for the murder investigation to be completed and for the land to be returned to his tribe.

He told a Survival researcher last year, “Nísio told me to be strong and fight for our land. All we need is for it to be protected for us.”

In the run up to the FIFA World Cup, Survival is highlighting ‘The Dark Side of Brazil’. Find out more about the situation of Brazilian Indians and the government’s attacks on their rights to their land: www.survivalinternational.org/worldcup

The Guarani suffer extremely high rates of suicide and violence as a result of the theft of their land.

© Survival

A shocking new study has revealed that a Brazilian tribe now suffers the highest suicide rate in the world. In 2013, at least 72 members of the Guarani tribe committed suicide (equivalent to 232 per 100,000), a rate that has nearly tripled over the last two decades. The majority of victims are between 15 and 30 years old.

The news follows violent clashes between police and indigenous protestors on the eve of the FIFA World Cup in Brazil.

The Guarani, who live in Brazil’s southern agricultural heartlands, have lost most of their land to cattle ranches and sugar-cane plantations, and their leaders are regularly attacked and assassinated. Forced from their land, the Guarani are living in squalid conditions by the roadside or in overcrowded reserves where alcoholism, disease, violence and suicide are rife.

One Guarani man said, “There’s no future, there’s no respect, there are no jobs and there is no land where we can plant and live. They choose to die because actually, they are already dead inside.”

Coca-Cola, one of the World Cup’s main sponsors, is implicated in the landgrabbing scandal which has brought misery and death to the Guarani. Coca-Cola has been sourcing sugar from U.S. food giant Bunge – which in turn is buying sugar cane from land which has been stolen from the Guarani.

In a letter to Coca-Cola, the Guarani pleaded, “We ask Coca-Cola to consider our suffering … We want Coca-Cola to stand beside us and feel our pain and suffering, because the sugar cane is destroying any hope of a future for our children. We ask Coca-Cola to stop buying sugar from Bunge.”

Coca-Cola and FIFA's image has been contrasted with an angry Indian man demanding, 'Let the Guarani live!'

© Survival International

To highlight the deep irony of Coca-Cola and FIFA promoting the World Cup with an image of a happy Indian man with the words “Welcome to the World Cup for Everyone”, Survival has created a spoof ad featuring Nixiwaka, a Yawanawa Indian welcoming the viewer to “The Dark Side of Brazil” and demanding “Let the Guarani live!”.

Amazon Indian Nixiwaka said today, “Coca-Cola is contributing to the destruction and misery of the Guarani Indians because it is buying sugar from a company which sources sugar cane from land stolen from the Guarani. Its picture of a happy Indian does not demonstrate the real situation behind the camera. Let my relatives, the Guarani, live!”

Survival’s Director Stephen Corry said, “Expropriating the image of a Brazilian Indian is an audacious move from Coca-Cola given its implication in the Guarani land grabbing scandal. This isn’t the first time tribal images have been used to promote tourism to a country whose indigenous citizens are being systematically persecuted. World Cup visitors need to realize that Brazil’s first peoples are paying the price of this economic boom.”

Notes to editors:
- Download the spoof ad ‘Welcome to the Dark Side of Brazil’
- according to the latest figures released by Brazilian NGOCIMI, the rate of suicide among the Guarani in Mato Grosso do Sul is 232 per 100,000
- see Survival’s website on the ‘Dark Side of Brazil’ for more examples of Brazil’s assault on indigenous rights
- Hundreds of anti-World Cup indigenous demonstrators clashed with police last week, as they protested against several controversial draft bills which would drastically undermine their land rights.
- Download the Guarani’s letters to U.S. food giant Bunge and Coca-Cola (Portuguese, pdf, 1.8MB)

Yanomami shaman and spokesman Davi Kopenawa celebrates the removal of ranchers from his tribe's land

© Mario Vilela/FUNAI

A joyous ceremony was held in a Yanomami community in northern Brazil on 31 May to mark the withdrawal of the last rancher to occupy the tribe’s land along the notorious ‘Northern Perimeter Highway’.

The celebrations held in the community of Ajarani were attended by Yanomami, public prosecutors, NGOs and representatives of the government’s indigenous affairs department, FUNAI.

In 2013, public prosecutors drew up an agreement with the last 12 ranchers who had occupied the south-eastern tip of Yanomami land for decades, even though the territory was officially recognized as belonging to the Yanomami in 1992.

The celebrations were held in the Yanomami community of Ajarani.

© Mario Vilela/FUNAI

The Yanomami of Ajarani suffered a catastrophic loss of life when hundreds died from measles and other diseases brought in by construction workers building the highway in the early 1970s.

Carlo Zacquini, a Catholic missionary who has worked with the Yanomami since the 1960s treated those he could and recalled, “We knew that along the Ajarani River alone, there were 15 villages before the road. When the road was completed, not one of these 15 villages remained. The survivors then formed one new village along the road. It was really shocking and FUNAI was totally absent.”

Later the state government gave colonists plots on Yanomami land along the highway which also gave goldminers easy access to the Indians’ territory.

In 2007 Hutukara, the Yanomami association, wrote to the President of Brazil demanding action and stating that, “We, the Yanomami people, are very angry and worried about the borders of our land. The region of Ajarani is the point of entry for invaders, problems and diseases. They continue cutting down our forest to increase their lands and fatten their cattle, and they bring in illegal fishermen.”

According to João Catalano, coordinator of FUNAI’s ‘Yanomami Protection Front’, “The challenge now is to promote the self-sustainability of the community” in a region where much forest has been destroyed and degraded by cattle pasture.

Last month, Yanomami shaman and spokesman Davi Kopenawa made a unique visit to the USA and told the American people that, “We must fight together to save the Earth.”

An advertising campaign to highlight the persecution of Botswana's Bushmen has reached hundreds of thousands of travelers.

© Survival International

A worldwide advertising campaign calling for a boycott of tourism to Botswana, launched by Survival International – the global movement for tribal peoples’ rights – has reached hundreds of thousands of travelers.

The ad has been published in international travel and lifestyle magazines including Wired, Escapism, Departures and Centurion magazines in France, Italy, Austria, Germany, Japan, and the U.K.

The ad, titled “Discover…the hidden secrets of Botswana” exposes the Botswana government’s intention to drive the last hunting Bushmen off their land in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, while promoting the reserve as a tourist destination.

Botswana’s Tourism Organization uses images of hunting Bushmen in their efforts to attract tourists to the country, while the Bushmen are literally starved off their land by not being allowed to hunt for subsistence, and harassed, arrested and beaten by wildlife scouts if they do.

The ad reads, “The government use glossy and contrived images of Bushmen to attract tourists – but they are using violence, torture and intimidation to deport the Bushmen from their ancestral lands in the country’s largest game reserve… This could mean the end for the last hunting Bushmen in Africa.”

Botswana’s President Ian Khama sits on the board of U.S. organization Conservation International and has been widely praised for his conservation work. But a diamond mine is operating in the Bushman’s reserve, and the government has issued permits for diamond and fracking exploration.

The Botswana Tourism Organization uses images like this one of the Bushmen hunting, while in reality they are banned from hunting and arrested if they do.

© Botswana Tourism/www.botswanatourism.co.bw

Over 8,000 people have so far pledged not to visit Botswana until the Bushmen are allowed to live on their land in peace, including celebrities Gillian Anderson, Sir Quentin Blake, Joanna Lumley, Sophie Okonedo, and Mark Rylance.

Survival supporters have protested at travel fairs in New York, London, Berlin, Madrid, and Milan and several tourism companies have also joined the boycott.

Bushman Jumanda Gakelebone recently visited the U.K. to call on the support of Prince Charles. In a letter delivered to the Prince, the Bushmen said, “We have survived alongside the animals of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve since the beginning of time. We know how to look after them and we hunt them for our survival, not for entertainment like many tourists from your country do.”

Survival’s Director Stephen Corry said, “The Botswana conservation industry promotes tours to supposedly protected zones. The Bushmen there are persecuted. Anyone thinking of going on safari should ask themselves whether they really want to play a part in the destruction of the last hunting Bushmen of Africa.”

Convicted fraudster Heribert Roedel bought up ancestral Enxet territory in Paraguay – and then evicted the Indians.

© H Roedel’s Facebook page

Paraguay’s President Horacio Cartes has today signed an historic bill for the expropriation of 14,400 hectares of land on behalf of a group of Enxet Indians of northern Paraguay.

The Enxet community of Sawhoyamaxa has been living in squalid conditions on the side of a highway for two decades after their land was bought by German conman Heribert Roedel, owner of cattle company Liebig.

Roedel made his fortune after conning members of the public in Germany, who believed they were investing in land purchases in Paraguay.

With the funds he defrauded from German investors, Roedel himself bought large areas of land in the Paraguayan Chaco, and evicted the Enxet Indians who had been living there since time immemorial.

The Enxet have been claiming title to their ancestral territory since 1991. At least 19 members of the community died while they waited. Survival International repeatedly lobbied the Paraguayan government for the Enxet to be allowed to return.

With the help of local organization Tierraviva, the Enxet took their case to the Inter-American Court on Human Rights in 2001.

The Court found the Paraguayan government guilty of violating the Enxet’s right to their land in 2006, and ordered that 14,400 hectares of it be returned to the Sawhoyamaxa community within three years.

Eight years later, in June 2014, 150 Enxet Indians arrived in Paraguay’s capital Asunción to demand the government sign a bill that would legally enforce the Inter-American Court’s ruling.

Today their wait is over.

Enxet leader Leonardo González told journalists, “We have recovered our Mother Earth. Without her, we could not exist, we could not be free, we could not walk, we could not be happy.”

An indigenous Guarani boy held up a banner reading 'Demarcation Now!' at the World Cup's opening ceremony.

© Luiz Pires/CGY

One of the three Brazilian children who released white doves during the World Cup opening ceremony used the occasion to demand recognition of Indian land rights – but his protest was censored by FIFA.

Immediately after releasing a white dove, Jeguaká Mirim, an indigenous Guarani boy, held up a red banner reading ‘Demarcation Now!’ But his courageous protest was not broadcast, as the TV cameras swiftly cut away.

Jeguaká’s father, Guarani author Olívio Jekupe, said that the act “showed the world that we are not standing still… My son showed the world what we need the most: the demarcation of our lands.”

The Guarani are Brazil’s most numerous tribe and they live in five states. Much of their land has been stolen from them and is being used for cattle ranching and sugar cane production, whilst many Guarani are forced to live in overcrowded reserves or in roadside camps where malnutrition and disease are rife. Some, like Jeguaká’s community known as Krukutu, live near urban areas like São Paulo on almost no land.

As a result of the loss of their land, the Guarani-Kaiowá of Mato Grosso do Sul state suffer the highest suicide rate in the world, and their leaders are targeted and killed when they attempt to reoccupy patches of their ancestral land.

The Guarani, Survival International and other organizations are calling on the Brazilian government to uphold its own constitution and international law, and map out the Guarani’s land for their exclusive use.

Coca-Cola, one of the World Cup’s main sponsors, has recently become embroiled in the Guarani land scandal by buying sugar from US food giant Bunge, which sources sugar cane from their ancestral land. The Guarani are urging Coca-Cola to respect their rights and stop this purchase immediately.

Coca-Cola and FIFA's image has been contrasted with an angry Indian man demanding, 'Let the Guarani live!'

© Survival International

To highlight the deep irony of Coca-Cola and FIFA promoting the World Cup with an image of a happy Indian man with the words ‘Welcome to the World Cup for Everyone’, Survival has created a spoof ad featuring Nixiwaka, a Yawanawa Indian welcoming the viewer to ‘The Dark Side of Brazil’ and demanding ‘Let the Guarani live!’.

See Survival’s website on the ‘Dark Side of Brazil’ for more examples of Brazil’s assault on indigenous rights.

Survival’s new ad urges Russia to stop beef imports from Paraguay until the Ayoreo’s land is protected

© Survival International

A new ad campaign has been launched in Russia warning people not to buy Paraguayan beef because of the risk the ranching industry poses to the Chaco’s uncontacted Indians.

Russia is the biggest importer of Paraguayan beef.

Beef company Yaguareté Porá is destroying vast swathes of forest inhabited by uncontacted Ayoreo Indians in Paraguay to make way for cattle destined for Russians’ dinner plates. 


Satellite images have revealed that the company is destroying the last tracts of standing forest in the northern Chaco region of Paraguay, an area recently found to have the fastest rate of deforestation in the world.

Survival has launched an advertising campaign warning Russia to stop beef imports from Paraguay until the Ayoreo’s land is protected.

Contacted Ayoreo have demanded their legal right to the land being destroyed by Yaguarete Porá for more than twenty years.

Under Paraguayan and international law, the government has the duty to return the land to its ancestral owners: the Ayoreo.

Uncontacted Ayoreo depend on the forest for their survival, and face extinction if they come into contact with the ranchers.

Many Ayoreo have already been forced out of the forest by ranchers and missionaries, and countless have contracted deadly diseases spread following first contact.

Satellite imagery has confirmed the Ayoreo’s innate ability to protect their forest, but their land is now an island of trees amidst massive forest clearances.

Russian social media networks and blogs have already published the warning over Paraguay’s beef, and dozens of media outlets have received Survival’s advert, which will continue to appear in the coming months.

Survival International’s Director Stephen Corry said today, “The good image of Paraguayan beef, one of the country’s most important exports, is being jeopardised by the actions of one renegade company. Unless the government can bring Yaguarete Porá under control, and block their plans to deforest most of their landholding, the whole country’s beef exports to Russia, its biggest buyer, will be placed in jeopardy. Few will want to buy beef that could have been produced by cutting down the last refuge of the uncontacted Totobiegosode Indians.”

Bones and Asháninka Indian robes have been uncovered in several mass graves in Peru.

© Luis Vilcaromero, Ministerio Público Perú/AP

The largest mass grave in Peru has been uncovered by a team of government investigators, in the ancestral land of Asháninka Indians in the jungle in central Peru.

The grave contains the remains of around 800 people, the majority believed to be Asháninka and Matsigenka Indians.

The Indians were decimated in a violent conflict between Maoist guerrillas known as ‘The Shining Path’, and counter-insurgency forces in the 1980s.

Around 70,000 people are estimated to have died or disappeared during the insurgency.
Bodies from several other mass graves in Asháninka territory are currently being exhumed.

The Asháninka have survived centuries of intense conflict since their land was first invaded by the Spanish in the 16th century.

In 1742, the Indians successfully defeated the Spanish, in a revolt which closed off a large part of the Amazon for a century.

Today, their land is under threat from oil and gas projects, hydroelectric dams, drug trafficking and deforestation.

A few small groups of Shining Path rebels remain active, mostly confined to the Ene and Apurimac rivers (which form part of the Asháninka’s homeland).

Asháninka leader Ruth Buendía was this year presented with the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize for her work against the Pakitzapango Dam.

The dam was one of six hydroelectric projects planned under an energy agreement between Brazil and Peru, and would have forced thousands of Asháninka from their homes.

In 2011, Buendía and her organization CARE succeeded in getting the dam suspended through legal action.

See Survival’s picture gallery of the Asháninka tribe here.

Bulldozers clearing Mursi land in Mago National Park, where communities are being evicted from their land to make way for sugar plantations.

© E. Lafforgue/Survival

Representatives of some of Ethiopia’s biggest aid donors have announced that they will send a team to the southwest of the country to investigate persistent reports of human rights abuses amongst the tribes living there.

Survival International, the global movement for tribal peoples’ rights, has exposed how the tribal people of the Lower Omo Valley are being persecuted and harassed to force them off their land to make way for cotton, oil palm and sugar cane plantations.

Many other organizations have published similar reports.

The plantations are made possible by the Gibe III hydroelectric dam, which is itself the subject of huge controversy.

The dam, which is nearing completion, will have a serious impact on the livelihoods of 500,000 tribal people, including those living around Kenya’s Lake Turkana.

It is also projected to have catastrophic environmental consequences for the region, which is home to renowned UNESCO World Heritage sites on both sides of the border.

Survival and other NGOs have repeatedly denounced the eviction of hundreds of Bodi and Kwegu and continue to receive reports that people are being intimidated into leaving their lands for resettlement camps.

Daasanach are being forced off their land to make way for infrastructure development such as this giant pump at Omorate, which will facilitate irrigation of the plantations.

© E. Lafforgue/Survival

The Ethiopian government has not sought or obtained the indigenous peoples’ free, prior and informed consent to move from their lands, in breach of the guidelines for resettlement drawn up by the Development Assistance Group (DAG), a consortium of the largest donors to Ethiopia, including the US, the UK, Germany and the World Bank.

DAG provides significant financial assistance to the local administration responsible for the forced evictions.

DAG has decided to return to the Lower Omo later this year to investigate the situation, even though the evictions continue regardless of past donor visits, the findings of which have often not been published.

This decision follows mounting worldwide concerns. European parliamentarians from Italy, Germany and the UK have asked questions in the European Parliament, and MPs in the UK and Germany have raised their concerns with various ministries. Parliamentary questions have also been tabled in the UK.

In February the US Congress ruled that US taxpayers’ money not be used to fund forced resettlements in Lower Omo.

Following a lawsuit brought by Friends of Lake Turkana, the Kenyan courts have ruled that the Kenyan government must release all information about the deals it has made with Ethiopia about buying electricity generated by the Gibe III dam.

Earlier this year, a UNESCO report recommended that Lake Turkana be inscribed on the List of World Heritage in Danger.

The Federal Court of Australia has upheld a ruling against Channel 7 for breaching the “racism clause” in their Sunday Night program about the Suruwaha.

© Channel 7

An Australian TV station has been found guilty of racism for broadcasting a report about an Amazon tribe so extreme it was labeled “Freakshow TV” by Survival International, the global movement for tribal peoples’ rights.

In September 2012 Australia’s press regulator ACMA, in a landmark decision, had found Channel 7 guilty of “provoking intense dislike, serious contempt or severe ridicule against a person or group” and of broadcasting inaccurate material. Channel 7 sought judicial review, but the Federal Court has now upheld the ruling.

The report by “adventurer” Paul Raffaele and reporter Tim Noonan portrayed Brazil’s Suruwaha tribe as child murderers, “Stone Age” relics, and “one of the worst human rights violators in the world”.

A Suruwaha man told Survival that the program contained lies about the tribe. He said, “They’re lying about us, because we don’t kill children. Paul and Tim lied. They took the footage they filmed here far away, to show JOCUM (a fundamentalist, evangelical missionary organization) and to lie about us.”

He added, “He (Paul Raffaele) is a bad person; he has really made us suffer. How could he treat the Suruwaha so badly?”

The report portrayed the Suruwaha as the 'worst human rights violators in the world'.

© Armando Soares Filho/ FUNAI

Survival complained to ACMA after Channel 7 refused to issue a correction to its report. Channel 7 did not appeal the substance of the ruling, but rather asked the court to declare that various statements in the report were not factual in nature. A judge has now rejected this attempt to overturn ACMA’s ruling on a technicality, and the ruling stands.

The Suruwaha have been the target of fundamentalist missionaries who falsely claim that they regularly kill newborn babies. The missionaries had lobbied Brazil’s Congress to pass a law which would have allowed Indian children to be removed from their families.

Channel 7’s website openly fundraised for the evangelical organization associated with the campaign.

Survival’s Director Stephen Corry said, “Tribal peoples have been accused of ‘savagery’ since the first European colonists arrived and sought justification for the brutalities of imperialism. Unfortunately the myth of the ‘Brutal Savage’ is rearing its ugly head once more – and it’s just as harmful now as it was then. It is right and proper that this ruling has been upheld. There is no excuse for such extreme prejudice in the media today.”

Notes to editors:

- Survival seeks to challenge public portrayals of tribal peoples as “primitive”, “violent”, or backwards. Survival believes that tribal peoples are neither more nor less violent than people in the West.
- Read more about the “Myth of the Brutal Savage” and Survival’s critique of “popular science” writers such as Steven Pinker, Napoleon Chagnon and Jared Diamond.

Sightings of uncontacted Indians have been on the rise in the region where uncontacted Indians were famously photographed and filmed from the air four years ago.

© Gleison Miranda/FUNAI/Survival

Brazilian officials have warned that uncontacted Indians face imminent “tragedy” and "death" after a dramatic increase in the number of sightings in the Amazon rainforest near the Peru border. 

Experts believe that the Indians have fled over the border from Peru in a bid to escape waves of illegal loggers invading their territory. They are now entering the territory of other isolated Indian groups already living on the Brazil side – and some settled communities.

Ashaninka Indians in Acre state, Brazil, for example, say they recently encountered dozens of uncontacted Indians close to their community, and recent government investigations have revealed more frequent sightings of footprints, temporary camps and food remains left behind by the Indians.

These incidents are raising fears of violent clashes between the various groups, and decimation by contagious diseases to which the uncontacted Indians have no immunity.

José Carlos Meirelles, who monitored this region for the Brazilian government’s Indian Affairs Department FUNAI for over 20 years, said, “Something serious must have happened. It is not normal for such a large group of uncontacted Indians to approach in this way. This is a completely new and worrying situation and we currently do not know what has caused it.”

The Indians were spotted in the same region where uncontacted Indians were famously photographed and filmed from the air four years ago. But the area lacks protection since a government post was abandoned after it was overrun by drug smugglers and illegal loggers in 2011.

Uncontacted Indians aiming bows and arrows at a plane overhead (photographed in 2008)

© Gleison Miranda/FUNAI

The uncontacted Indians are some of the most vulnerable people on the planet. Although they appeared healthy, they have no immunity to common diseases such as flu and measles which have wiped out entire tribes in the past.

FUNAI investigated the Ashaninka’s alarming reports two weeks ago. It warned that “contact is imminent” and demanded that health teams must be sent to the area as a matter of urgency or “they risk catching diseases… which could kill them all.”

Prominent Amazon Indian leader Raoni Metuktire, who has led the fight for the Kayapó tribe’s land and against the destruction of the Amazon, said during his recent visit to Europe, “Where will the uncontacted Indians go? Without their lands protected, they will die.”

Survival International, the global movement for tribal peoples’ rights, is calling on the Brazilian and Peruvian governments to protect all land inhabited by uncontacted tribes and to honor their promise to improve cross-border coordination to safeguard their welfare.

Survival’s Director Stephen Corry said today, “International borders don’t exist for uncontacted tribes, which is why Peru and Brazil must work together to prevent lives being lost. Throughout history, uncontacted peoples have been destroyed when their land is invaded, and so it’s vital that these Indians’ territory is properly protected. Both governments must act now if their uncontacted citizens are to survive.”

Notes to editors:

- Survival has produced a long-form feature article on the uncontacted Indians around the Peru-Brazil border. Please get in touch if you are interested in publishing it.
- Audio clips of the account of one of the Ashaninka who encountered the uncontacted Indians are available on request
- See Survival’s new World Cup website on the “Dark Side of Brazil” for examples of Brazil’s assault on indigenous rights.
- The Brazilian and Peruvian Amazon are home to the highest concentration of uncontacted tribes in the world. Survival’s Research Director Fiona Watson, world expert on uncontacted tribes, is available for interview. 

An Aché woman shortly after she was captured and brought out of the forest to the Aché Reservation. Paraguay, 1972.

© A. Kohmann/Survival

The survivors of a South American tribe which was decimated during the 1950s and 60s are taking Paraguay’s government to court over the genocide they suffered.

The case of the hunter-gatherer Aché tribe, who roamed the hilly forests of eastern Paraguay until being brutally forced out, became notorious in the 1970s.

As the agricultural expansion into eastern Paraguay gathered pace from the 1950s, the Aché found themselves forced to defend their land from an ever-increasing colonist population. These colonists soon started to mount raiding parties to kill the male Aché: women and children were usually captured and sold as slaves.

One of the most notorious hunters of the Aché was Manuel Jesús Pereira, a local landowner. He was an employee of Paraguay’s Native Affairs Department, and his farm was turned into an Aché “reservation”, to which captured Aché were transported. Beatings and rape were common. Countless others died of respiratory diseases. The Director of the Native Affairs Department was a frequent visitor, and also sold Aché slaves himself.

This situation was denounced by several anthropologists in Paraguay, many of whom were deported, or lost their jobs, as a result. It was brought to international attention by German anthropologist Mark Münzel. His 1973 report Genocide in Paraguay, published by the Danish organization IWGIA, documented many of the atrocities committed against the Aché.

Survival International publicized Münzel’s account, and sponsored an investigation by leading international lawyer Professor Richard Arens, who found the situation as bad as others had reported. Many other international organizations, academics and activists denounced the atrocities and called for Paraguay’s government to be held to account, which curbed some of the worst excesses.

However, Paraguay’s then-President, General Alfredo Stroessner, was viewed as a key Western ally in the region. The British, US and West German governments denied that genocide was taking place, and the US authorities sponsored the Harvard-based organization Cultural Survival (CS) to “review the status of indigenous peoples in Paraguay”. Their report to the government was confidential, but a copy was obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. CS then published an amended version.

Relying partly on the testimony of Peace Corps volunteer, Kim Hill, it denied that genocide had taken place, and criticized many of those, such as Münzel and Arens, who had brought the Aché’s plight to global attention. US aid to Stroessner’s brutal regime continued.

Now, the survivors of the genocide and their descendants are seeking redress. An Aché organization, the National Aché Federation, has launched a court case in Argentina, with advice from leading human rights lawyer Baltasar Garzón. The Aché are using the legal principle of “universal jurisdiction”, under which the most serious crimes such as genocide and crimes against humanity can be tried and punished in a different country to that in which they occurred, if the victims cannot secure justice in their own country.

Ceferino Kreigi, an Aché representative, said, “We’re asking for justice – there was torture, rape, beatings. We can no longer bear the pain we have suffered.”

The Aché’s lawyer, Juan Maira, said, “[The Aché] were hunted as though they were animals, because they wanted to confine them to a ghetto. Once in the reserve, they weren’t allowed to leave. They sold not only the children, but sometimes the women too, as slaves. Perhaps 60% of the population could have been wiped out.”

The Aché’s population is now increasing once more, though their forests have been stolen for cattle ranching and farming, and almost totally destroyed.

Read Survival’s report on the denial of the Aché genocide.

These pictures show the miserable conditions the Aché who were captured and brought out of the forest endured at the Aché “reservation”:

Aché Indians shortly after they were captured and brought out of the forest to the Aché Reservation. Paraguay, 1972. Download hi-res image Credit: © A. Kohmann/Survival

Aché Indians shortly after they were captured and brought out of the forest to the Aché Reservation. Paraguay, 1972. Download hi-res image Credit: © A. Kohmann/Survival

Aché Indians shortly after they were captured and brought out of the forest to the Aché Reservation. Paraguay, 1972. Download hi-res image Credit: © A. Kohmann/Survival

Aché Indians shortly after they were captured and brought out of the forest to the Aché Reservation. Paraguay, 1972. Download hi-res image Credit: © A. Kohmann/Survival

Aché Indians shortly after they were captured and brought out of the forest to the Aché Reservation. Paraguay, 1972. Download hi-res image Credit: © A. Kohmann/Survival

Highly vulnerable uncontacted Indians have made contact with a settled indigenous community close to where these Indians were photographed from the air in 2010.

© Gleison Miranda/FUNAI/Survival

A highly vulnerable group of uncontacted Amazon Indians has emerged from the rainforest in Brazil near the Peru border and made contact with a settled indigenous community.

The news comes just days after FUNAI, Brazil’s Indian Affairs Department, and Survival International, the global movement for tribal peoples’ rights, warned of the serious risk of such an incident, in light of the failure of the Peruvian authorities to stop rampant illegal logging on its side of the border.

The Indians had been coming increasingly close to the settled Asháninka Indians who live along the Envira River.

News emerged on Tuesday from the remote region that the Indians had made contact on Sunday with the Asháninka, who had been reporting their presence for several weeks.

It is thought that uncontacted Indians in Peru have been pushed over the border into Brazil due to rampant illegal logging of their rainforest (photograph taken in 2008)

© Gleison Miranda/FUNAI

A specialist FUNAI team is in the area to provide help to the newly-contacted group, and a medical unit has been flown in to treat possible epidemics of common respiratory and other diseases to which isolated indigenous groups lack immunity.

Nixiwaka Yawanawá, an Indian from Brazil’s Acre state who joined Survival to speak out for indigenous rights said, “I am from the same area as they are. It is very worrying that my relatives are at risk of disappearing. It shows the injustice that we face today. They are even more vulnerable because they can’t communicate with the authorities. Both governments must act now to protect and to stop a disaster against my people.”

Survival’s Director Stephen Corry said today, “Both Peru and Brazil gave assurances to stop the illegal logging and drug trafficking which are pushing uncontacted Indians into new areas. They’ve failed. The traffickers even took over a government installation meant to monitor their behavior. The uncontacted Indians now face the same genocidal risk from disease and violence which has characterized the invasion and occupation of the Americas over the last five centuries. No one has the right to destroy these Indians.”

“Please write to the Peruvian and Brazilian governments urging them to immediately implement measures to ensure the Indians’ lands and lives are protected here.

Note to editors:
- Survival’s Research Director Fiona Watson, a world expert on uncontacted Indians, is available for interview.
- Read Survival’s Q&A about uncontacted tribes

Yanomami man. The Yanomami and several other Amazonian tribes have joined forces to reject 'devastating' mining.

© Hutukara/ Survival

Amazon Indians have released a series of desperate statements calling on their governments to put a stop to mining which is destroying their land and threatening their existence.

COIAM– the Coalition of Indigenous Organizations of the Venezuelan Amazon – has expressed “extreme concern about the growing levels of illegal mining” and called on the Venezuelan government to review its mining policy which they see as a “clear contradiction of [Venezuela’s] aim to save the planet and the human race”, as stated in the Plan de la Pátria (Country Plan for 2013-2019).

The government created a Presidential Commission in March to develop mining in the region, without consulting indigenous peoples who have warned of the “serious environmental damage” it will bring to their forest.

The Indians are calling for a moratorium on mining in the southern Orinoco region and the immediate recognition of their land ownership rights, which are guaranteed in the constitution.

Indigenous organization Kuyujani said in a recent statement that “it is a question… of exercising autonomy and the right to self determination.”

The Yanomami and the Yekuana tribes continue to see their rivers polluted with the miners’ mercury which contaminates drinking water and fish, and many communities have been devastated by diseases and prostitution introduced by the miners.

Research by Venezuelan scientists in 2013 showed that 92% of indigenous women in the region had levels of mercury contamination that exceeded the internationally accepted limit.

The uncontacted Yanomami, some of the most vulnerable people on the planet, stand to lose the most. Contact with the miners could wipe them out.

Indigenous organizations from Venezuela, Brazil and Guyana met in May to discuss their concerns about their governments’ current drive to encourage mining and the construction of hydroelectric dams in the border region known as the Guyana Shield.

They called for a mobilization against mining and dams in Amazonia and for the three governments to uphold and apply the international law on tribal and indigenous peoples’ rights.

Despite winning a landmark court case in 2006, the Bushmen have faced harassment, intimidation and torture by the Botswana government.

© Survival

Exactly 10 years ago – on July 5, 2004 – a landmark court case started which successfully challenged the illegal eviction of Botswana’s Bushmen from their ancestral land. But since then, the Botswana government has continued its persecution of the last hunting Bushmen, for which it has been condemned nationally and internationally.

In 2006, Botswana’s High Court ruled that the Bushmen’s eviction from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve had been “unlawful and unconstitutional”, and that they had the right to live, hunt and gather inside the Reserve and did not have to apply for permits to enter it.

But despite the ruling the Botswana government has:
- refused to provide water to the Bushmen in one of the driest places on Earth;
- prevented them from hunting for their survival by intimidation, torture and arrest;
- required most Bushmen to apply for restrictive permits to enter their Reserve;
- barred their long-standing lawyer, who successfully represented the Bushmen in three court cases, from entering the country and representing his clients;
- accused the Bushmen of harming the wildlife inside the Reserve (for which it has not produced any evidence), while allowing a diamond mine to go ahead and issuing licenses for fracking exploration.

Botswana’s High Court called the case “a harrowing story of human suffering and despair”; the UN’s former Water Advisor Maude Barlow said, “It’s hard to imagine a more cruel and inhuman way to treat people”; Botswana political activist and former Robben Island prisoner Michael Dingake said, “Without hunting, Basarwa [Bushmen} are literally being starved to surrender”; and the BBC’s John Simpson called the government’s policies “ethnic cleansing of the Kalahari.”

The Bushmen's lawyer Gordon Bennett with his clients in 2004. He has since been barred from entering the country.

© Survival

Botswana’s treatment of the Bushmen has further been condemned by the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, the US State Department, the United Nations, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and local and international media.

Survival International, the global movement for tribal peoples’ rights, has called for a tourism boycott of Botswana until the Bushmen are allowed to live freely and in peace on their land. Several travel companies and over 8,000 people have supported the boycott, and a global ad campaign has brought the message to hundreds of thousands of travelers.

Survival’s Director Stephen Corry said today, “As if depriving the Bushmen of water and forcing them from their land wasn’t enough, now they’re accused of ‘poaching’ because they hunt their food. The Bushmen face arrest and beatings, torture and death, while fee-paying big game hunters are encouraged. All tourists who visit Botswana’s game parks should ask themselves, ‘How many tribal communities were destroyed in the making of this reserve?’”

Note to editors:

- Read more criticisms of the Botswana government over its treatment of the Bushmen (pdf, 639 KB)