“Survival launches “Stop Brazil’s Genocide” campaign in Olympic year”, 19 April 2016

Survival International has launched a campaign to prevent the annihilation of tribal peoples in Brazil to coincide with the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio. Today is Brazil’s “Day of the Indian,” highlighting indigenous causes and culture across the country...[T]he campaign...[ “Stop Brazil’s Genocide”]...aims to bring attention to serious human rights issues and threats facing the country’s indigenous people...[It]...focuses on protecting uncontacted tribes...such as the Kawahiva people; ending violence and land theft directed against the Guarani Indians...; and stopping PEC 215, a proposed constitutional amendment which would seriously undermine indigenous land rights and spell disaster for tribes nationwide...Peoples like the Kawahiva are being wiped out by violence from outsiders who steal their land and resources, and by diseases like flu and measles to which they have no resistance...[R]anchers have devastated the territory of the Guarani people, and nearly all of their land has been stolen. Guarani children starve and their leaders are being assassinated by ranchers’ gunmen, one by one. Hundreds of Guarani men, women and children have committed suicide...PEC 215 would, if implemented, give landowners the chance to block the recognition of new indigenous territories, and could enable them to break up existing ones. As tribes depend on land for their very survival, this would pose an existential threat to many peoples, fatally undermining their human rights. Survival is arguing that collectively, these causes comprise a genocidal threat to tribal peoples in Brazil which must be stopped...