A decision by the Federal Court obliges the National Mining Agency (ANM) to carry out the auction of cassiterite illegally extracted from the Yanomami Indigenous Land, in Roraima. The measure, granted this Monday (30), responds to a request from the Federal Public Ministry (MPF) and aims to revert the amount raised to actions to guarantee the security of the territory and to combat illegal mining in the region.
The Justice determined that the entire procedure for the promotion of the auction be completed by February 28th. In addition to the non-extendable period, the decision also set a fine of R$ 100,000 per month, in case of non-compliance with the sentence. In July of last year, another Federal Justice injunction already determined the holding of the auction, with a forecast of the full transfer of the seized mineral to fund actions against illegal mining, including the removal of invaders from the area. Such actions should be planned and presented within 90 days, including the resource application plan.
Despite this, the measure was never fulfilled and the MPF held a new demonstration. For the body, the agency employs bureaucratic obstacles as a tool to paralyze the effectiveness of the preliminary decision and demonstrates disregard for both indigenous peoples and public property.
The agency must inform, within 5 working days, the data of the public agents responsible for organizing the auction, under penalty of a fine of R$ 1 thousand per day of delay in providing the indicated data.
Understand
In June 2022, the MPF filed a lawsuit with a request for provisional relief after the ANM did not comment on previous requests regarding the allocation to indigenous peoples of goods extracted from the area they occupy. The orders were based on a recommendation from the ministerial body, made the previous month, after learning that the agency was already preparing a notice to dispose of the mineral and other seized substances and intended to receive the amounts raised from the sale.
For the MPF, the reversal of the resources from the auction to the benefit of the agency itself “would be a serious inversion of the burden of the crimes that occurred in indigenous lands, since it is up to the government to prevent illegal mining from taking place, and thus cannot end up benefiting from the practice illegal”. The seized material has an estimated value of R$ 25 million.
Translated to english by RJ983
From Brazil, by EBC News
