Federal prosecutors in Brazil are investigating the reported killing of ten members of a previously uncontacted Amazonian tribe.
As reported by the Independent, a group of gold miners went to a bar in a town near to the Colombian border and boasted about the killings, even showing off a hand-carved paddle they had taken from the tribe.
Having heard this, Funai, the Brazilian agency of indigenous affairs, is said to have made a complaint to the prosecutor’s office in the state of Amazonas.
According to Leila Silvia Burger Sotto-Maior, Funai’s coordinator for uncontacted and recently contacted tribes, the men also bragged about cutting up the bodies and throwing them into a nearby river. Pablo Luz de Beltrand, the prosecutor in charge of the case, has now confirmed that an investigation has been opened into the matter.
The killings are alleged to have taken place last month in the Javari Valley – one of Brazil’s largest indigenous territories. Beltrand also indicated that this was the second reported killing of uncontacted tribe members in the region this year. The case into the first, which occurred in February, remains open.
“It was the first time that we’d had this kind of case in this region,” he told the Independent in a telephone interview. “It’s not something that was happening before.”
