Land is causing strife all across the
Amazon basin. Many of the
conflicts are sparked off by
the aggressive forays of miners and loggers into far-flung
areas of the Amazon as they
attempt to extract coal, gold
and timber. The groups
range from small miners
known locally as 'port
knockers' to giant timber
companies from faraway
Indonesia and Malaysia.
Conflicts have also been triggered by poor peasants in
search of land for farming
and government security
forces which have set off
bloody battles with indigenous people and landless
farmers.
Perhaps the hardest hit
by the influx of miners
and loggers are groups like
the Yanomani.on Jhe borders
of Brazil and Venezuela who
have never encountered
industrial society. There are
many other casualties too.
"Killing of Indians by military and police forces have
been reported from Wayuu
and Yupka areas in the
north-west of Venezuela,"
asserts Marcus Colchester of
the World Rainforest Movement in a report titled Venezuela: Violation of Indigenous
Rights. An equally hard blow
is the loss of Wayuu and the
Yupka land in the Sierra de la
Perija to large, state-controlled open cast coal mines
and oil drilling.
The so called development schemes have proved
to be the bane of indigenous
peoples in other parts of
Venezuela as they contend
with death, displacement
and disease. A particularly
bitter blow to the Perron,
Kapon, Karina and Lokono
peoples in Bolivar state near
the border with Guyana is
the conversion of their land
into timber concessions.
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