Indigenous woman killed by gunmen
The 9th of January farmers and gunmen attacked a group of Kaiowá Guarani families who had returned to their tekoha, traditional land, of Curusu Ambá, on the division of the cities of Amambai and Coronel Sapucaia, state of Mato Grosso do Sul (southwest Brazil).
The Indian woman Kuretê Lopes, of approximately 70 years, was killed by a shot in the chest, when the families were violently put in a truck and a bus. This happened in the morning, when also another indigenous man, Valdecir Ximenez, was wounded. The suspicion is that gunmen contracted by farmers have shot. Not satisfied yet with all the violence they threw the other indigenous people at a place outside of the city of Coronel Sapucaia
During the day four Indians had been put to prison when they tried to go to the indigenous land Tacuapery to ask for help of their relatives. They were being attacked and an indigenous child that fainted, was taken by the farmers.
This brutality confirms once more the violence and the hatred against the indigenous people who search their piece of land to survive. Private security services are contracted by farmers who can act in complete impunity. All this aggravated by the slowness of the Federal Government in demarcating and guaranteeing indigenous lands as determines in the Brazilian Constitution.
It is repulsive to see that the violence against and murders of the indigenous population in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul continues (in 2006 there were 40 indigenous peoples killed in Brazil, of which 20 in Mato Grosso do Sul). Similar crimes of the last years are still waiting for justice. CIMI asks the immediate verification of the facts and punishment of the culprits so that it does not come to more suffering, agony and genocide of the Kaiowá Guarani people.
That former leader Sepé Tiaraju illuminates the resistant Guarani warriors. That leader Marçal, killed in 1983, and all the ones that had tumbled in the fight, like Kuretê today, follow the fight of their people for a land, at least with less evil and violence.
