The 50 Tupinikim and Guarani Indians who were camping in front of the Ministry of Justice since Wednesday (17^th of January), decided to return to their villages in the Espirito Santo state.

 

During the two days of mobilization, with support of the organizations CIMI, CUT (Central of Trade Unions), MST, MAB, Rede Brasil de Instituições Financeiras, and others, the following activities were carried out:

 

On the 1st day, in the morning, the main avenue in front of the Ministries, was blocked during 5 minutes. Representatives of the Ministry of Justice declared that the Minister would not receive the Indians.

Later on this day, the Indians went to the Ministry in order to present a petition to the Minister, demanding him to edit without further delay, the demarcation decree, and responding some of the contents of the internal opinion paper of the Juridical Consultancy (Consultoria Juridica) of the Ministry of Justice, of which they got a copy. One of the wrong comments of this opinion paper is that Aracruz would only have 20,000 hectares of lands and by demarcating the 11,009 hectares of indigenous lands, Aracruz would lose more than half of its lands!! But according to the information of its own web page, Aracruz is owner of 400,000 hectares of lands, in other words, losing 11,009 hectares is quite insignificant for this company, but highly significant for the Indians who occupy today 7,061 hectares and with the 11,070 hectares would more than duplicate their lands!

 

When they were not received by the Ministry who asked them to look for FUNAI, the Indians decided to instead going to the Funai, looking for support at the Presidency of the Republic; there, they were not received by nobody but it was promised that a meeting would be organized for the next day with assistants of the Presidency.

 

On the 2nd day, in the morning, representatives of the Ministry of Justice and the FUNAI, came to talk with the Indians in the tents camp in front of the Ministry. They explained that the decision about the demarcation had not been taken yet because the Indians would have broken the agreement with the government. In other words, the Indians are guilty for the delay in the decision-making, while it was the Minister of Justice who promised to demarcate the lands still in 2006! This is what the Indians responded, and they also made clear that their protest actions are only a result of this lack of action of the government. So who broke the agreement (although there does not exist any written paper at all) is the government.

In the afternoon, the Indians met with the President of the Commission of Human Rights and Minorities of the Federal Parliament, Mr. Luiz Eduardo Greenhalgh. Here, the Indians explained once again the situation and stressed the pressure they feel in the area because of the racist and discriminatory campaign Aracruz has been realizing over the past few months against them. Greenhalgh committed himself to send an urgent letter to the Minister, asking him to declare the 11,009 ha as Tupinikim/Guarani land and to the Presidency of the Republic asking for an urgent meeting with the indigenous leaders.

 

Once the President and his main assistants, as well as the Minister of Justice, left Brasília, the Indians decided to go back to their villages and evaluate the visit together with their communities for further actions.