Open Letter to the National and International Public

 

Once more I want to express myself publicly against the Federal Government’s project to build the Belo Monte Hydroelectric which will have irreversible consequences especially for Altamira Anapu, Brazil Novo, Porto de Moz, Senador Jose Porfirio, and Vitória do Xingu, all municipalities of the state of Pará, as well as for the indigenous peoples of the region.

 

         As Bishop of the Xingu and president of Conselho Indigenista Missionário (Cime), I requested an audience with President Rousseff to submit face-to-face, our concerns, questions and all the arguments which support our position against Belo Monte. I deeply regret not having been received.

 

Unlike what was requested, the government offered me a meeting with the Minister of the General Secretariat of the Presidency, Gilberto Carvalho. However, on last Wednesday, March 16, in Brasilia, expressed before an audience of more than a hundred social and church leaders participating in a Symposium on Climate Change that "there is a strong and motivated conviction in the government that Belo Monte must be constructed, that it is possible, that it is feasible … So I will not tell Dilma to not create Belo Monte, because I think that Belo Monte will have to be built."

 

This position shows once more that the government is only interested in communicating the decisions taken, denying us any open and substantial dialogue. Thus, a meeting with the Minister of State Gilberto Carvalho makes no sense, which is why I decided to decline the invitation.

 

In recent years we have made many efforts to establish a channel of dialogue with the Brazilian Government about this project. Unfortunately, we found that the desired dialogue has been frustrated from the very beginning. The two audiences with former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on March 19 and July 22, 2009, were nothing but a formality. At the second hearing, the former president promised us that representatives of the energy sector, with brevity, would present answers to the well-founded technical inquiries on the project presented by Dr. Celio Bermann, professor of graduate studies at the Institute for Electrical Energy Energy and the University of São Paulo. These answers were never given, as also the technical arguments questioning Belo Monte presented in the Public Statement of the Expert Panel, composed of 40 scientists, researchers and university professors were never answered.

 

We did note, on the contrary, in the following months after these hearings, that Ibama technicians complained to suffer political pressure to complete there reports more quickly and to issue the preliminary license for the plant’s construction. Such political pressures are public knowledge and motivated even the resignation of several directors and presidents of this federal environmental agency Ibama. Then, recently the so-called "Specific License" was issued for the installation of the construction site. This is a type of license that does not exist in the Brazilian environmental legislation.

 

On February 8, 2011, indigenous peoples, riverine people, small farmers and representatives of various organizations of the civil society held a public manifestation in front of the Presidential Palace. On the occasion, a petition opposing the Belo Monte project with more than six hundred thousand signatures was handed over. Although they had requested a hearing with sufficient advance notice, they were not received by the President. They only managed to deliver it the substitute Minister of the General Secretariat of the Presidency, Rogério Sottile, accompanied by a letter that pointed out a series of arguments to justify the contrary position to the hydroelectric. This minister once more promised a dialogue and considered the letter “a report that I value, perhaps one of the most important of my political relationship in the government (…) I’ll take this report, this letter, this manifesto of you, the claims of you …”. Until this moment, no response!

 

The four public hearings – held in Altamira, Brasil Novo, Vitória do Xingu and Belém – were no more than mere formalism to stamp decisions already taken by the Government and comply with a protocol. Most of the threatened population could not be present. Opponents to the project that did make it to the location of the audiences had no real opportunity for participation and expression, due to inappropriate war machine mounted by the Police.

 

Until now, the indigenous have not been heard. The “Indigenous Hearings”, or consultations, did not happen. A few meetings were held with the aim of informing the indigenous on the plant. The indigenous that made their opposition to the Belo Monte Hydroelectric explicit in the minutes of these meetings were reassured by Funai officials that these Indigenous Hearings would be held later. To everyone’s surprise, the minutes of these briefings were fraudulently published by the Government in a document entitled “Indigenous Hearings”. This was denounced by the Indigenous who attended these meetings. Based on these allegations, we presented a petitioned the General Attorney of the Republic asking for an investigation and appropriate action.

 

The argument defended by Mr. Mauricio Tolmasquim, president of the Energy Research Company (EPE) that the Indigenous villages will not be affected by the hydroelectric of Belo Monte, because they will not to be flooded, is merely an attempt to confuse the public opinion. Exactly the opposite will occur: the inhabitants, both in villages and in the river, will be practically without water, due to the reduction of water volume. Now, these peoples live from fishing and family farming and use the river to get around. How will they come to Altamira to shop or to bring their ill people, when a wall of 1,620 meters long and 93 meters high were erected in front of them?

 

I believe it essential to clarify that there are no studies on the impact that the municipalities downstream will suffer, like Senador Joseph Porfirio and Porto de Moz, nor on the quality of the water of the reservoir that would be formed. What is the future of Altamira, with a current population of 105 000 inhabitants, when turned into a peninsula bordered by a rotten and dead lake? Those affected by the Tucuruí dam had to leave the region because of numerous plagues of mosquitoes and endemic diseases. But the technocrats and politicians who live in the federal capital, simply scorn the possibility that the same will happen in Altamira.

 

We alert the national and international society that Belo Monte is based in the illegality and in the denial of dialogue with the affected people, risking to be built under the rule of armed forces, as has been happening with the Transposition of the San Francisco river in the northeast of Brazil.

 

The Federal Government, in case Belo Monte were constructed, will be directly responsible for the disgrace that would come over the Xingu region and the entire Amazon.

 

Finally, we declare that no “condition” will be able to justify the Belo Monte hydroelectric. We will never accept this project of death. We will continue to support the struggle of the peoples of the Xingu against the construction of this “monument to insanity”.

 

 

Brasilia, March 25, 2011

 

 

Bishop Erwin Kräutler

Bishop of the Xingu and Chairman of

Cimi – Indigenous Missionary Council