RIO DE JANEIRO: Rare footage of purportedly uncontacted members of a Brazilian indigenous tribe hunting in the Amazon rainforest was released Monday by activists who warn the group could be wiped out by logging.
The 58-second clip filmed in the northern state of Maranhao shows members of the Awa tribe, which Survival International says has been frequently attacked by loggers who have been emboldened by pro-business President Jair Bolsonaro.
“Only a global outcry stands between them and genocide,” said Stephen Corry, director of Survival International, which published the video that had been shot by a member of neighboring indigenous tribe Guajajara. The footage was shot in August, the NGO said.
“Loggers have already killed many of their relatives and forced others out of the forest.
“President Bolsonaro and his friends in the logging industry would like nothing more than for those who still survive to be eliminated.”
In the footage, a young man holding a machete in the rainforest appears to sniff the blade before he looks toward the person filming him. Seconds later he and other members of the tribe carrying spears run away.
“We didn’t have the Awa’s permission to film, but we know that it’s important to use these images because if we don’t show them around the world, the Awa will be killed by loggers,” said Erisvan Guajajara of Midia India, an indigenous film-making association.
Members of the Guajajara tribe belong to the Guardians of the Amazon group, which aims to protect isolated indigenous people.
While most Awa have been contacted, some are known to still live uncontacted in an area of rainforest that is being “rapidly destroyed,” Survival International said.
Since taking office in January, Bolsonaro has been accused of harming the Amazon rainforest and indigenous peoples in order to benefit loggers, miners and farmers who helped get him elected.
Bolsonaro, whose anti-environment rhetoric has included a pledge to end “Shiite ecologist activism,” has questioned the latest official figures showing deforestation increased 88 percent in June compared with the same period last year.
He uses the word “Shiite” as a synonym for radicalism rather than denoting a branch of Islam.
“We are experiencing a real environmental psychosis,” Bolsonaro said Sunday.
Bolsonaro also accused foreign journalists Friday of wanting Brazil’s estimated 800,000 indigenous people to remain in a “prehistoric state, without access to technology, science and the thousand wonders of modernity.”
Rare footage of Brazil tribe threatened by loggers: activists
Rare footage of Brazil tribe threatened by loggers: activists
- Since taking office in January, Bolsonaro has been accused of harming the Amazon rainforest and indigenous peoples in order to benefit loggers, miners and farmers who helped get him elected
Fans bid farewell to Japan’s only pandas
TOKYO: Panda lovers in Tokyo said goodbye on Sunday to a hugely popular pair of the bears that are set to return to China, leaving Japan without the beloved animals for the first time in half a century.
Loaned out as part of China’s “panda diplomacy” program, the distinctive black-and-white animals have symbolized friendship between Beijing and Tokyo since the normalization of diplomatic ties in 1972.
Some visitors at Ueno Zoological Gardens were left teary-eyed as they watched Japan’s only two pandas Lei Lei and Xiao Xiao munch on bamboo.
The animals are expected to leave for China on Tuesday following a souring of relations between Asia’s two largest economies.
“I feel like seeing pandas can help create a connection with China too, so in that sense I really would like pandas to come back to Japan again,” said Gen Takahashi, 39, a Tokyo resident who visited the zoo with his wife and their two-year-old daughter.
“Kids love pandas as well, so if we could see them with our own eyes in Japan, I’d definitely want to go.”
The pandas’ abrupt return was announced last month after Japan’s conservative premier Sanae Takaichi hinted Tokyo could intervene militarily in the event of any attack on Taiwan.
Her comment provoked the ire of Beijing, which regards the island as its own territory.
The 4,400 lucky winners of an online lottery took turns viewing the four-year-old twins at Ueno zoo while others gathered nearby, many sporting panda-themed shirts, bags and dolls to celebrate the moment.
Mayuko Sumida traveled several hours from the central Aichi region in the hope of seeing them despite not winning the lottery.
“Even though it’s so big, its movements are really funny-sometimes it even acts kind of like a person,” she said, adding that she was “totally hooked.”
“Japan’s going to be left with zero pandas. It feels kind of sad,” she said.
Their departure might not be politically motivated, but if pandas return to Japan in the future it would symbolize warming relations, said Masaki Ienaga, a professor at Tokyo Woman’s Christian University and expert in East Asian international relations.
“In the future...if there are intentions of improving bilateral ties on both sides, it’s possible that (the return of) pandas will be on the table,” he told AFP.
