Under the radar: Yanomamis massacred, Curacao oil spill

Too much fucked up shit happens all at once, and it’s hard to keep up.

Someone flew into the Amazon and killed off an entire village of indigenous Yanomami, possibly to make way for illegal mining.

Goldminers in Venezuela have carried out a ‘massacre’ of isolated Yanomami Indians, according to reports received by Survival International.

Witnesses of the aftermath described finding ‘burnt bodies and bones’ when they visited the community of Irotatheri in the country’s Momoi region, close to the border with Brazil.

Initial reports suggest up to 80 people have been killed, but these numbers are impossible to confirm. Only three survivors have been found.

The attack is believed to have happened in July, but news is only just emerging.

Due to the community’s remote location, it took the Indians who discovered the bodies days to walk to the nearest settlement to report the tragedy.

And in case you are still in a good mood, Caracas Chronicles points us to an oil spill in Curacao. To be clear, this is the Caribbean, a relatively unspoiled patch of tropical water full of coral reefs and white-sand, turqoise-water beaches.

An oil spill from the Isla Refinery, currently handled by PDVSA, has stricken the natural reserve of Jan Kok located nearby. Several wild species including flamingoes (one of them seen in the picture) call Jan Kok home.

Reporter Dick Drayer of Dutch Public Broadcaster NOS indicated that the size of the spill covers an area the size “…of around 30 football fields”. His report is available here (in Dutch). Peter van Leeuwen, a member of the enviromental group Stichting SMOC called the incident “…probably the biggest (environmental) disaster in Curacao”.

Many good links at the Caracas Chronicles article.