Action after fatal attack on the Ñande Ru Marangatú community urged

Following the attack against the Guarani-Kaiowá Ñande Ru Marangatú community, which caused the death of one of its members, Semião Vilhalva (24), and wounded several others, including a one-year old child hit by a rubber bullet, FIAN International and FIAN Brazil ask the Brazilian government to conduct investigations into the attack and take due action.

On 29 August, about a hundred armed landowners wearing bulletproof vests and driving forty trucks headed to the “Barra” Farm, in order to illegally evict the Guarani-Kaiowá from their ancestral territory.  The next day the coffin carrying the body of Semião Vilhalva, still a young man, was delivered to the community by an outsourced driver of the Special Secretariat of Indigenous Health (SESA).

The indigenous land Ñande Ru Marangatú was homologated by former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on March 28, 2005, but the process was suspended by a preliminary injunction granted by the then Federal Supreme Court (STF) Justice, under the premises of Nelson Jobim, the same year (MS No. 25463). Ten years later, the case continues to await trial and is currently under analysis by Justice Gilmar Mendes.

The community of Ñande Ru Marangatú has  been affected over all this time by the misuse of lawsuits, which seek to boycott the case and prevent the execution of the homologation decree, issued according to the Constitution and following procedures by the Brazilian legal system. Legal appeals and delays in its trial have led to the violation of the right of indigenous peoples to their territory and to adequate food. Given the judiciary’s 10-year delay in deciding the law suit concerning the community’s ancestral territory , they decided to occupy on 23 August the areas that overlap the ancestral territory (Tekoha) of the Ñande Ru Marangatú community. It was this reoccupation that “triggered” the attack on August 29.

In this context FIAN International and its section in Brazil urge Brazil’s governing bodies to take a series of measures. They urge to set up a taskforce to investigate the incident, identify the perpetrators and participants of the young indigineous man’s murder and ensure exemplary punishment is handed out to all those responsible for the acts of violence against the Ñande Ru Marangatú community. On this note, the Brazilian Congress should investigate the participation and involvement of Federal Deputies and Senators in the attack. 

By the same token, FIAN International and FIAN Brazil call on the government, and the corresponding judiciary power, to take the necessary actions to conclude the long-overdue demarcation process of Indigenous Territory Nhanderu Marangatu and other Indigenous Lands in the State. 

For more information, please read the letter here (in Portuguese).