Small towns in Maine speaking back to the corporate food system and now we hear Natives in the Amazon are busting dams!!!
On the Eve of the Rio+20 UN Conference,
Community Resistance Calls Attention to Brazilian Government's Unsustainable
Energy Policy
Amazon Watch, International Rivers, Movimento Xingu Vivo
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE | June 15, 2012
For more information, contact:
Andrew Miller, +55-21-8380-7699, Email address removed
Atossa Soltani, +1-202-256-9795 or +55-21-8380-8050 or +55-93-9210-7211,
Email address removed
Brent Millikan, +55 618-153-7009, Email address removed
Movimento Xingu Vivo, +55-11-9853-9950 or +55-93-3515-2927
Altamira, Brazil -- While the Brazilian Government prepares to host the Rio+20
United Nations Earth Summit, 3,000 kilometers north in the country's Amazon
region indigenous peoples, farmers, fisherfolk, activists and local residents
affected by the construction of the massive Belo Monte Dam project began a
symbolic peaceful occupation of the dam site to "free the Xingu
River."
In the early morning hours, three hundred women and children
arrived in the hamlet of Belo Monte on the Transamazon Highway, and marched
onto a temporary earthen dam recently built to impede the flow of the Xingu
River. Using pick axes and shovels, local people who are being displaced by the
project removed a strip of earthen dam to restore the Xingu's natural flow.
Residents gathered in formation spelling out the words "Pare
Belo Monte" meaning "Stop Belo Monte" to send a powerful
message to the world prior to the gathering in Rio and demanding the
cancellation of the $18 billion Belo Monte dam project (aerial photos of the
human banner available upon request).
Demonstrators planted five hundred native aà §ai trees to
stabilize the riverbank that has been destroyed by the initial construction of
the Belo Monte dam. They also erected 200 crosses on the banks of the Xingu to
honor the lives of those lost defending the Amazon.
Also this morning, hundreds of residents of Altamira held a
march to the headquarters of dam-building consortium NESA. The actions are part
of Xingu+23, a multi-day series of festivities, debates and actions
commemorating 23 years since the residents of the Xingu first defeated the
original Belo Monte dam. Residents have been gathering in the community of San
Antonio, a hamlet displaced by the consortium's base of operations and in
Altamira, a boomtown of 130,000 severely affected by the dam project.
Antonia Melo, the coordinator of Xingu Vivo Movement said,
"This battle is far from being over. This is our cry: we want this river
to stay alive. This dam will not be built. We, the people who live along the
banks of the Xingu, who subsist from the river, who drink from the river, and
who are already suffering from of the most irresponsible projects in the
history of Brazil are demanding: Stop Belo Monte."
Sheyla Juruna, a leader from the Juruna indigenous community
affected by the dam said, "The time is now! The Brazilian government is
killing the Xingu River and destroying the lives of indigenous peoples. We need
to send a message that we have not been silenced and that this is our
territory. We vow to take action in our own way to stop the Belo Monte dam. We
will defend our river until the end!"
Protestors and affected communities are highlighting the
glaring gap between reality and the Brazilian government's rhetoric about
Amazon dams as a source of "clean energy" for a "green economy."
The Belo Monte dam is the tip of the iceberg of an unprecedented wave of 70
large dams proposed for in the Amazon Basin fueled by narrow political and
economic interests, with devastating and irreversible consequences for one of
the world's most precious biomes and its peoples.
A delegation of international observers and human rights
advocates including Brazilian actor Sergio Marone of the Drop of Water Movement
came to witness and lend visibility to the actions.
Slated to be the 3rd largest hydroelectric project in the
world, Belo Monte would divert 80 percent of the Xingu River's flow through
artificial canals, flooding over 600 square kilometers of rainforest while
drying out a 100-kilometer stretch of the river known as the "Big
Bend," which is home to hundreds of indigenous and riverine families.
Though sold to the public as "clean energy," Belo Monte would
generate an enormous amount of methane, a greenhouse gas 25-50 times more
potent than carbon dioxide.
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