The Brazilian Committee of Human Rights Defenders declared that in 2021 the country experienced the criminalization of popular movements. | Photo: Brasil de Fato

Brasilia, December 23 (RHC)-- The Pastoral Land Commission in Brazil found that in the country, between January and November 2021, 26 murders were recorded in conflicts in the countryside, 30 percent higher than what was recorded in 2020.

According to the agency, 418 territories in the country were targets of violence in the first eight months of 2021, of which 28 percent of them are indigenous territories.  Likewise, the agency's report Violence against Occupation and Possession showed that of the 103 consequent deaths registered so far in 2021, 101 were Yanomami indigenous people.

Of the territories identified, 28 percent are indigenous territories; 23 percent are quilombolas; 14 percent are catalogued by the agency as squatter territories, and 13 percent are landless territories, among others.

Other data detail that the destruction of housing increased by 94 percent, the destruction of belongings by 104 percent, while eviction rose by 153 percent, and the "impediment of access to areas of collective use" by 1,057 percentage points.

"During 2021 we monitored several invasions by prospectors into Yanomami territory, resulting in murders, aggressions, threats, threats to territory, water contamination, and deforestation; in addition to being vectors of various diseases, among them COVID-19," the Commission reiterated.

"We also saw children being sucked into dredges and drowning while fleeing the gunfire of criminals. The lack of public health and nutrition policies exposed the high rate of malnutrition that affects Yanomami children, often fatally, and also exposed how diseases such as malaria, leishmaniasis and pneumonia continue to kill these indigenous people in our country," the document recounted.

According to the Brazilian Committee of Human Rights Defenders (CBDDDH) in 2021 Brazil experienced another year of criminalization of popular movements, human rights defenders and activists.