The Council of the Yanomami and Ye'kuana Special Indigenous Health District submitted a letter on June 30 to Brazilian Ministers of Justice and Environment demanding expulsion of gold miners that have raided their Amazon reservation. The letter, signed by 30 Yanomami and Ye'kuana community representatives and advocates said, "It's not hard to foresee that we are returning to a situation of social and sanitary chaos like the one we experienced at the end of the 1980s and the early 1990s, when at least a fifth of the Yanomami population died from diseases brought by the prospectors."
An estimated 500 miners have opened five underground strips and were caught in at least eight areas within the rainforest between Brazil and Venezuela, the Special Indigenous District Council told the Associated Press. "The number of miners is rising because the Federal Indian Bureau and the federal police aren't doing anything to remove them," Davi Kopenawa, a Yanomami leader, told the Associated Press.
