What does the official investigation say about the battle in which the Venezuelan military killed four Yanomami Indians

The inoccultable and brutal massacre of four Yanomamis by Venezuelan soldiers has caused national and international repudiation when the arcos and the arrows of the indigenous people confronted the firearms of the Aviation soldiers located at the Parimabe Border Base, Alto Orinoco municipality, Amazonas state. The CICPC report, file K-22-0256-00108, reports that four 9mm caliber shells or casings were seized, a Beretta 92F weapon, as well as some 70 shells or a 7.62 mm AK103 rifle shell.

They identify the four dead indigenous people: EGS (23 years old), JB (33), CSG and MG (48).

The Scientific, Criminal and Criminal Investigations Corps (CICPC) highlights the multidisciplinary Commission formed by Brigadier General (Av) Francisco Zapata, commander of the José Antonio Páez Air Base; by the Forensic Medicine Service (Senamecf) Dr. Amaury Gutiérrez; Paola Matarán for the Public Ministry; and Commissioner Ali Perez del CICPC Puerto Ayacucho Municipal Delegation. They traveled by air from the capital of Amazonas to the scene.

“From the first investigations, it was revealed that Chief Sabino Silva and several members of the Yanomami Community, held a strong discussion with aviation officials for reasons yet to be determined, wielding firearms, shotguns, bows and arrows from both sides, with the already known result of injuries and deceased”.

“The multidisciplinary team will spend the night at the FANB's La Esmeralda Base today (March 22) and will arrive tomorrow in the city of Puerto Ayacucho. It is recorded that communications and cellular signals are null and void in the indigenous communities, so if more information is available, the Superiority will be notified.”

Wounded Indians:

-The yanomami BS (16 years old), wounded by firearm in the humerus region of the left arm with exposed fracture and in the right leg.

-Sabino Silva, Chief of the Yanomami community: wounds caused by firearms, one flush in the right parietal region and another in the right hand.

-Gary García Borguez, wife of Chief Sabino: gunshot wound to the right hand.

Injured military:

1st Lieutenant (Av) Christopher Jesús Bolívar Pino (38 years old): gunshot wounds to the abdomen (entrance), left intercostal (exit), axillary region (entrance) and shoulder blade region (exit).

-1st Lieutenant (Av) Eduar José Evans Seijas (25 years old): gunshot wound to the abdomen.

-Soldier (Av) Jefferson Jesús Sebastián Garrido Urión: gunshot wound to the abdomen.

After the indigenous people allowed the transfer of the wounded from the scene to the hospital, the siege that the Yanomami have around the Parimabe Border Base has continued.

The Prosecutor interviews the military officials involved in the incident, at the headquarters of the Integral Defence Operational Zone (ZODI), which causes discomfort among indigenous people who consider the Public Prosecutor's Office little transparency to conduct interrogations at the military headquarters, with the Aviation soldiers causing the murder of the Yanomami.

They repudiate the massacre

52 representatives of indigenous organizations and peoples of Venezuela speak out “in the face of the crime committed, on Sunday, March 20, 2022, against the Yanomami brothers Parima B, Alto Orinoco, Amazonas state”.

The first thing they emphasize is that the four Yanomami “were vilely massacred by members of the National Armed Forces, quartered in the ancestral lands of the Yanomami and Ye'kwana.”

“Once again, one of the members of the Venezuelan Armed Forces, has stained his uniform with the murder of four (4) members of the Yanomami people, including a woman, and several were injured; this massacre was perpetrated with advantageous use and war superiority by the weapons of the State, violating the physical integrity of the indigenous people who have been the ancestral guardian of the territory and guarantor of national sovereignty in the Venezuelan Amazon”.

“The regrettable annihilation of the victims occurs for ignoble and futile reasons, due to the Community's demand that the officials of the Armed Forces return their router to them for wireless connection because they needed to connect to the Internet, which is a human right guaranteed by the UN (A/HRC/32/L.20), the military refused to return the device provided to them by the Yanomami community, thus violating their human rights, and an attack on freedom of expression and free information.”

They condemn and reject the actions of the military officials “responsible for this massacre. We demand that the National Government provide justice, clarification of the facts and punishment of those responsible for these crimes. As well as the implementation of the fundamental rights of indigenous peoples, established in the national and international normative framework signed by Venezuela”.

They emphasized that they condemn “the murder and femicide perpetrated against an indigenous woman by officials responsible for guaranteeing territorial and border security, violating the human right to life, especially the individual and collective rights of indigenous women, who in exercise of their self-determination live in conditions of voluntary isolation or initial contact”.

Listening to the indigenous

In the document signed by indigenous organizations and representatives call on the administration of justice “judges and prosecutors of the Public Prosecutor's Office, General Directorate of Human Rights of the Office of the Attorney General of the Republic, as well as investigative agencies, to listen to indigenous authorities and leaders, as well as to recognize the right to ownership of the lands and habitats that they traditionally occupy and in which there is an indigenous customary right that regulates community life that is guaranteed by the Organic Law on Indigenous Communities and Peoples”.

They ask to understand that “they are in indigenous territory where Yanomami self-justice is applied; these forms of Yanomami justice are what has maintained balance, harmony and coexistence in that space”.

“We reject the xenophobic actions, racial and gender discrimination that result from the geno-ethnocide of an original people who have maintained and preserved with their wisdom millennia the ecological balance of the Venezuelan Amazon. This bears the indigenous Yanomami people as bearers of knowledge and practices considered material and intangible cultural heritage of the country and humanity.”

They alerted the bodies guaranteeing the human rights of fundamental indigenous peoples, “to the repeated brutal attacks on members of the Yanomami people, as well as other indigenous peoples”, while recalling the massacre in Haximu, which was committed 30 years ago by Brazilian garimpeiros against the Yanomami. Also “the acts committed by a DGCIM command to a group of Pemón brothers in Canaima, Gran Sabana, Bolivar state, in December 2018, where a Pemón brother died”.

The signatories say that the continuing acts of violence “show a systematic violation of fundamental human rights and as indigenous peoples, caused by actions by civil and military authorities located in the habitats and territories of our indigenous peoples”.

They propose to demand and assume “before our Indigenous Peoples, civil and military authorities, before national and international public opinion that what happened in Parima B, with the balance of 4 Yanomami brothers executed, is a responsibility of the Bolivarian and Socialist State, and those who acted on their behalf with the arms of the Republic in against a population that is disproportionately defenseless and must therefore be prosecuted and condemned”.

Also the revision of the role of the FANB, of civil and police authorities, “located in indigenous territories making disproportionate and excessive use of public forces that are totally opposed to the peaceful forms of conflict resolution of indigenous peoples in their traditional lands and habitats”.

Finally, they call for a thorough review to determine whether the so-called civic military unit is being effectively applied in indigenous territories, in accordance with the spirit and mandate of Hugo Chávez.

They request that the Office of the Prosecutor General of the Republic and other auxiliary organs of justice initiate an “objective investigation into this and other incidents of violation of the human rights of indigenous peoples”.

They consider that the recent case where the four Yanonami died, as well as others that occurred in indigenous territories, “must be known to the Indigenous Jurisdiction, pending the application of justice, and not be diverted to the Military Jurisdiction, as has already happened in other cases, ending in judicial limbo, where the truth of the most vulnerable is overshadowed by procedural truth”.

They recommend the installation of permanent working and dialogue tables to resolve existing conflicts in indigenous territories, while implementing training and training programmes for civil or military civil servants working in indigenous habitat and lands, in activities or institutions relating to indigenous peoples and communities, for the knowledge and respect of their rights, cultures, practices and customs.

They urge that officials, from Nicolás Maduro Moros, including national and regional deputies, councillors and other indigenous spokespersons elected by popular vote, as well as indigenous organizations and institutions “to make a forceful and unitary statement, condemning this new, fatal and tragic aggression that mourns our Indigenous Peoples and Communities”.

They warn “the right-wing media and their national and international political spokespersons not to use and distort what we express as an attack on the Government, the revolutionary process and the Bolivarian Armed Forces”, to finally request that what they request “is justice, to activate the mechanisms necessary to remove the cancer of impunity, classism and racism that persists within the institutions of Our Bolivarian State, whose ills operate in Indigenous Territories”.

The document is endorsed by: Orpia, Upciaven, AC of Bare Women Entrepreneurs, AC Temendawi, Network of Human Rights Defenders Indigenous Rights and Rights of Nature, Puerto Samariapo Indigenous Committee, Bare Indigenous Language School, Redsur, Human Rights Committee of La Guajira, Foundation for Global Indigenous Assistance, Orindeiwa, Wayuu Añu Wakuaipa unit of Rio Negro, Wayuuwaka Organization, Fundawaleker, Wayuu Jalianaya Indigenous Art Association, Chaima Sucre Organization, Autonomous Organization of Putchipuu de la Guajira, Binational Organization of Wayuu Women, Lumaa Foundation, Indigenous Movement of Guayana.

Also for the Bare: Menca Yacame, Rosa Petit, Yarit Rodríguez, Nieves Azuaje, Silvestra González and Mirleny Guerrero. By Baniva: Olga Melguero, Nieves Lopez, Belkis Bueno, Diana Frontado and Miguel Avaristo. Wayuu: Luz Fernández, Jose David Gonzalez, Rusbel Palmar, Tawanui Guillen, Esmerita Gonzalez, Librada Pocaterra, Emelindro Fernández, Karin Herrera, Adolfo Caldera, Yan Joshua Palmar Barroso, Jose Manuel Larreal, Delia Gonzalez, Esmerita Gonzalez, Silvia Viloria, Mileila Viloria and Luis Emiro Beltran Thumb. Karina: Tito Poyo and Jose Poyo. Chaima: Angel Vargas, Isnardy Mendez Coa and Archimedes Velasquez.

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