URGENT: “We will die. We will not leave without being heard.” 4th June

Only two days after the reoc­cu­pa­tion of the Belo Monte Dam began, the fate of 170 indige­nous peo­ple is at stake. Yes­ter­day, the Fed­er­al Court in Altami­ra ordered them to leave by 4 pm today or they would be removed by Fed­er­al Police. They respond­ed by tear­ing up the order and refused to leave by the dead­line. Instead, they are stand­ing strong and are demand­ing that Pres­i­dent Dilma’s Chief of Staff, Gilber­to Car­val­ho, come meet with them. Their let­ter to the Brazil­ian gov­ern­ment is below. Read, share and take urgent action right now!

You can also show your sup­port by donat­ing to the indige­nous occu­pa­tion on CAUSES.

Let­ter No. 8:
The mas­sacre has been announced and only the gov­ern­ment can avoid this fate

(Orig­i­nal ver­sion in Por­tuguese here)

We have occu­pied the con­struc­tion site of the Belo Monte Dam. We are defend­ing our lands. These ancient lands have always been ours and you have already tak­en a part of them. And now you are try­ing to take more. We will not leave.

You will come to kill us and we will die. We will not leave with­out being heard.

The fed­er­al gov­ern­ment announced a mas­sacre of indige­nous peo­ples, the 170 war­riors, women, chil­dren, lead­ers and shamans who are here. This mas­sacre is going to hap­pen at the hands of police, Funai, and the judi­cial sys­tem.

You have killed at Teles Pires and will kill again when you need to. You killed us because we are against the dams. We know what you are capa­ble of doing.

This time the gov­ern­ment and cor­po­ra­tions have asked Norte Ener­gia to kill us. Norte Ener­gia pled their case to a fed­er­al judge, who sub­se­quent­ly autho­rized the police to beat and kill us if need­ed. Gov­ern­ment of Brazil and cor­po­ra­tions build­ing Belo Monte, it will be your fault if any of us die.

Enough with the vio­lence! Stop threat­en­ing us! We want our peace and you want your war. Stop lying to the press that we are kid­nap­ping work­ers and bus­es and caus­ing an incon­ve­nience. The occu­pa­tion is qui­et The unrest is caused by the police sent by the judge, Norte Ener­gia, and the gov­ern­ment. You are the ones who are humil­i­at­ing us, threat­ing us, intim­i­dat­ing us, and assas­si­nat­ing us when you don’t know what else to do.

We demand the sus­pen­sion of the order to repos­sess the con­struc­tion site, until Thurs­day morn­ing, May 30th, 2013. The gov­ern­ment needs to come here and hear us. You already know our agen­da. We demand the sus­pen­sion of all works and stud­ies of dams on our lands. We demand the removal of the Nation­al Force from our lands. The lands are ours. You have wast­ed enough of our lands.

You want us to be tame and qui­et, obey­ing your civ­i­liza­tion with­out ques­tion. But in this case, we know you would rather see us dead because we are mak­ing noise.