Federal Police takes down six mines on indigenous land in Pará

Daleth Oliveira – Cenarium Magazine

BELÉM – The Federal Police (PF) closed six illegal mines in the Kayapó Indigenous Land, in Ourilândia do Norte, a town in the southeast of Pará, during an operation to combat environmental crimes and illegal mining last Monday, December 12. Machinery, engines and support structures were rendered useless. Nobody was arrested.

According to the Federal Police, a total of six hydraulic excavators, known in the region as “PC”, seven stationary engines, a pickup truck, 6,000 liters of diesel, three motorcycles, and five support structures were destroyed. The damage to the offenders exceeds R$ 3.5 million.

The Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office (MPF), the National Foundation for Indigenous Peoples (Funai) and the Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (Ibama) took part in the operation with air support from the Operational Aviation Command (Caop) of the Federal Police.

The operation is part of the actions to combat crimes on indigenous lands, complying with a decision of the Federal Supreme Court (STF) in ADPF 709/2020. The action was proposed by the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (Apib), in August 2020, requesting measures to protect indigenous communities to curb the advance of crime in indigenous territories.

Inspection on unoccupied land

On Sunday, 11, the Federal Police conducted an incursion into the Apyterewa Indigenous Land, located in São Félix do Xingu, southeast Pará. The operation was conducted in conjunction with the MPF, Funai and Ibama, with the objective of verifying the inactivity of the mines and collecting evidence to support actions to combat land grabbing and deforestation in the region. By means of overflights it was possible to confirm that the mines had been removed from the indigenous land, which had already been identified previously by satellite images.

The Federal Police assures that the actions of monitoring and combating the outbreaks of illegal mining will be maintained by the entity in conjunction with other inspection agencies.