BRASILIA (Reuters) – Brazilian federal police said on Friday it was still investigating the alleged rape and death of a 12-year-old Yanomami girl by illegal gold miners, but cast doubt on the truth of the allegations.
The police officer heading the investigation Daniel Ramos told reporters that interviews with community members of the village of Aracaça in the northern state of Roraima turned up contradictory information, raising doubts about the case.
“The nature of the complaint does not match the concrete and real facts,” Ramos said at a news conference in state capital Boa Vista.
The report of rape and death made last week by the Yanomami health council Condisi, who said miners had abducted the girl, was followed by reports that the village was burned to the ground and its inhabitants had vanished.
Ramos said the Yanomami had moved to another village. Indigenous representatives said the villagers fled into the forest to get away from the gold miners after the girl died.
The Yanomami people live next to the border with Venezuela on Brazil’s largest indigenous reservation that has been invaded by thousands of miners illegally prospecting for gold, causing pollution of rivers, shooting incidents and other abuses.
The mining boom has brought disease, violence and grave human rights violations on the Yanomami people, according to a recent study that blamed high gold prices and tacit government support.
The gold rush on protected Yanomami lands has increased under Brazil’s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro who is backing legislation to allow commercial agriculture, mining and oil exploration on indigenous reservations.
The Federal Police said in a statement that while it was investigating the death of the Yanomami teenager, it destroyed nearby support infrastructure of the gold miners, including the burning of 17,000 liters (4,490 gallons) of fuel.
No arrests were made.
In Brasilia, human rights activists gathered outside the government’s indigenous affairs agency Funai to protest the lack of state protection for the Yanomami people.
Brazil’s main indigenous umbrella organization APIB filed an injuction on Thursday before the Supreme Court seeking government action to protect the Yanomami from the gold miners.
The government’s solicitor general did not reply to a request for comment.
(Reporting by Anthony Boadle; Editing by Richard Chang)
