Friday, September 28, 2012

Saturday, September 08, 2012

Refugee protest march to Berlin – Bus route


The bus tour will start on the 8th of September in Würzburg.
The idea of the bus tour is to support the foot march that starts on the same day in Würzburg. The bus tour goes through the west and north of Germany to get in touch with refugee camps that are further away from the foot route.
With the bus it will be possible for people who can not walk the way from Würzburg to Berlin to still join the protest.
A representing person of the protest tents will be in the bus from the start. On the way, more refugees have confirmed to become part of the bus tour. Every refugee who can not make the foot march of 600 kilometers but still wants to be part of the protest tent in Berlin is welcome to join.

The route of the bus tour is:
Würzburg 8.9
Frankfurt 9/10.9
Mainz/Wiesbaden 11.9
Kassel 12.9
Köln 13.9
Bonn 14.9
Düsseldorf 15/16.9.
Duisburg 17.9
Essen 18.9
Dortmund 19.9
Büren/paderborn 20.9
Bielefeld 21.9
Münster 22.9
Osnabrück 23.9
Hildesheim 24.9
Braunschweig 25.9
Magdeburg 26.9
Berlin 27.9

Everyone who wants join the bus tour / is able to support it can contact the bus support team per e-mail: refugeeresistanceworldwide@lavabit.com or phone 0049-15223608273
or Ashkan.khorasani@gmail.com
Special support is needed for vehicles / minibusses / coaches between the 14th and 16th of September and after the 23rd of September.

Sunday, September 02, 2012

Gold miners killed more than 80 members of Yanomami tribe


Brazil is pressing Venezuela to determine whether Brazilian gold miners crossed the border and massacred a village of about 80 indigenous people from a helicopter.

The alleged assault, which a tribal group says could have killed more than 70 people in early July, came to light this week when the group asked Venezuela's government to investigate. Because of the remoteness of the region and the scattered nature of the native settlements, fellow tribe members were able to alert the government only on Monday.

Brazil's foreign ministry said on Friday that its embassy in Caracas had asked the Venezuelan government to provide it with any information that could help it determine whether the attack had happened and whether Brazilians had been involved.

Brazil's National Indian Foundation, a government body that oversees indigenous affairs, said it would seek a joint investigation by officials from both countries at the site.

The border area between the two countries – a long, dense swath of the Amazon rainforest – has increasingly become the site of conflicts between indigenous people, gold miners, and others seeking to tap jungle resources.

The tribe that was allegedly attacked, the Yanomami, says it has given repeated, but unheeded, warnings to Venezuela's government that the conflicts are intensifying.

On Wednesday, Venezuela's public prosecutor said it would investigate. By late Friday, however, Venezuela's government still could not confirm whether the attack had occurred.

The Venezuelan interior minister, Tareck Al Aissami, said in televised comments on Friday that officials had managed to speak with seven of the nine known groups of the Yanomami tribe and thus far had no proof of an attack in any of their settlements. Officials would soon meet with those and the other two groups to further clarify the matter, he said. "God willing, there won't have been any violence among the other two groups either."


In the document presented to Venezuelan authorities this week, Yanomami leaders said tribe members in the area had spoken with three villagers from the community where the attack allegedly took place.

The three villagers, the only inhabitants of the community known to be alive, said they had been hunting away from the settlement when they heard a "tokotoko" – their indigenous word for helicopter. They also heard gunfire and explosions, the document said. Other Yanomami who visited the village later said a communal hut had been burned and that they found charred bodies and bones.

The attack was the latest in a growing number of conflicts with Brazilian gold miners, the Yanomami said in the document. The tribe alerted soldiers in the region in late July about the attack and the soldiers interviewed some of the tribespeople who had seen the destroyed village, according to the document. Venezuela's army has not commented.

The remote settlement is a five-hour helicopter flight, or 15-day walk, from Puerto Ayacucho, capital of the southern Venezuelan state of Amazonas. Because of the distance and isolation of many indigenous settlements, the government is often unable to protect tribes from incursions by outsiders. Much of the violence goes unreported, and followup investigations are difficult once conflicts take place.
SOURCE