Reclusive tribe armed with bows and arrows kills loggers allegedly encroaching on their land in Peru, group says
Two loggers have been killed by bow and arrow after allegedly encroaching on the land of the uncontacted Mashco Piro Indigenous tribe deep in Peru’s Amazon, according to a rights group.
The group, known as FENAMAD, defends the rights of Peru’s Indigenous peoples. It says tensions between loggers and Indigenous tribes are on the rise and more government protective action is needed.
Two other loggers in the attack were missing and another was injured, FENAMAD said, and rescue efforts were underway.
photos emerged of the uncontacted tribe searching for food on a beach in the Peruvian Amazon, which some experts say was evidence logging concessions are “dangerously close” to its territory. Survival International, an advocacy group for Indigenous peoples, said the photos and videos posted showed about 53 male Mashco Piro on the beach. The group estimated as many as 100 to 150 tribal members would have been in the area with women and children nearby.
A 2023 report by the United Nations’ special reporter on the rights of Indigenous peoples said Peru’s government had recognized in 2016 that the Mashco Piro and other isolated tribes were using territories that had been opened to logging. The report expressed concern for the overlap, and that the territory of Indigenous peoples hadn’t been marked out “despite reasonable evidence of their presence since 1999.”
In 2018, footage showed an indigenous man believed to be the last remaining member of an isolated tribe in the Brazilian Amazon.
Source: cbsnews.com