A global coalition is demanding intervention from Brazil to protect Amazon tribes 'on the eve of a genocide' from coronavirus

• Brazil's nearly one million indigenous peoples face "the risk of genocide" if the novel coronavirus pandemic reaches their communities, a global coalition of actors, thinkers, celebrities, and artists warned in a May 1 letter.
• "Five centuries ago, these ethnic groups were decimated by diseases brought by European colonizers," the signatories said. "Now, with this new scourge spreading rapidly across Brazil … [they] may disappear completely since they have no means of combating COVID-19."
• The letter demands immediate intervention from the Brazilian government, led by President Jair Bolsonaro.
• Under Bolsonaro's leadership, Amazon deforestation has reached record levels.
• According to a 2015 study, there is a direct correlation between forest destruction and infectious diseases. For every 1% of forest that is cleared, malaria cases increase up to 23%.
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Brazil's nearly one million indigenous peoples face a looming "genocide" unless the Brazilian government immediately intervenes, according to a global coalition of scholars, artists, and actors.

The coronavirus outbreak has infected more than 100,000 people in Brazil, according to Johns Hopkins University data, and killed over 7,000. For indigenous tribes in Brazil, the pandemic poses "an extreme threat to their very survival," said an open letter to President Jair Bolsonaro, signed by Oprah Winfrey, Madonna, Brad Pitt, Paul McCartney, and other high-profile figures, according to The Guardian.

"Five centuries ago, these ethnic groups were decimated by diseases brought by European colonizers," the letter said. "Now, with this new scourge spreading rapidly across Brazil … [they] may disappear completely since they have no means of combating COVID-19."

According to Brazilian photojournalist Sebastião Salgado, who organized the petition and has spent nearly 40 years reporting on the indigenous Amazon, the government must remove illegal loggers, gold miners, and other industrial interests from the indigenous land to stem the threat of infections.

"We are on the eve of a genocide," Salgado told The Guardian.

"Indigenous communities have never been so under attack," Salgado also told the outlet. "The government has no respect at all for the indigenous territories."

Before the pandemic, destruction of the Brazilian Amazon was on the rise. In 2019, a ten-year high of 3,700 square miles of rainforest were razed, according to ZME Science, a news outlet.

Researchers have located a direct correlation between deforestation and infectious-disease rates. A 2015 study of 773 Amazon towns found that for when 1% of forest is cleared, malaria cases increase between 14% and 23%, according to the Instituto de Pesquia Econômica Aplicada (Institute of Applied Economic Research), a government-led research group.

Between August 2019 and March 2020, more than 2,000 square miles of forest have been newly destroyed, the Wall Street Journal reported. That destruction is 71% larger than the previous high-mark, from August 2016 to March 2017.

"As a result, there is nothing to protect indigenous peoples from the risk of genocide caused by an infection introduced by outsiders who enter their land illegally," said the petition, which the Guardian reported was also signed by supermodels Gisele Bündchen and Naomi Campbell, author Mario Vargas Llosa, artist Ai Weiwei, architect Norman Foster, and actor Meryl Streep.

"When you endorse or encourage an act that you know will eliminate a population or part of a population, this is the definition of genocide," Salgado told the outlet. "[It will be] genocide because we know this is going to happen, we are facilitating ... the entry of coronavirus ... [and therefore] permission is being given for the death of these indigenous people."

"It would mean the extinction of Brazil's indigenous peoples," he added.

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