Amazon Warriors Fight Off Loggers

Illegal loggers have long invaded areas of the Amazon rainforest. Tired of what they say is a lack of sufficient government assistance, the Ka’apor Indians feel it is time to take matters into their own hands. The tribe sent out their best warriors to hunt down loggers and drive them off their land.

The Ka'apor Indians are the legal inhabitants and caretakers of the territory along with four other tribes. Together, they have set up monitoring camps in the areas that are being illegally exploited.

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Brazil acquits suspect in activist murders

Jose Rodrigues Moreira, a Brazilian man accused of conspiring to kill two environmental activists, has been acquitted, as two other men were found guilty. The jury set Moreira free on Thursday due to insufficient evidence, disappointing family members of the murdered married couple who claim he was the alleged mastermind of the attack and has enjoyed impunity.

Jose Claudio da Silva and his wife, Maria do Espirito Santo, had for years campaigned against loggers and ranchers who force slave labour to clear-cut large swaths of the Amazon. They had reported illegal loggers to police and federal prosecutors, and were killed in a May 2011 ambush near the Amazonian town of Maraba.

Two men, Lindonjonson Silva Rocha and Alberto Lopes do Nascimento, were found guilty of killing the couple and sentenced to more than 40 years in prison each. "This is a clear defeat for the families of the victims," said Al Jazeera's Gabriel Elizondo, reporting from the court. "This was the person they really wanted to see go to jail.

"There are about 100 people outside the court; family members, friends, acquaintances. They're all chanting 'justice' and 'crime'." Prosecutors vowed to appeal the acquittal of Moreira.

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Loggers 'burned Amazon tribe girl alive'

Loggers in Brazil captured an eight-year-old girl from one of the Amazon's last uncontacted tribes and burned her alive as part of a campaign to force the indigenous population from its land, reports claimed on Tuesday night.

The child was said to have wandered away from her village, where around 60 members of the Awá tribe live a primitive life in complete isolation from the modern world, and fallen into the hands of the loggers.

Luis Carlos Guajajaras, a local leader from a separate tribe, told a Brazilian news website that they tied to her a tree and set her alight as a warning to other natives, who live in a protected reserve in the north-eastern state of Maranhão ."She was from another tribe, they live deep in the jungle, and have no contact with the outside world. It would have been the first time she had ever seen white men. We heard that they laughed as they burned her to death," he said.

Reports of the killing, which was said to have happened in October or November last year, were seconded by the Indigenous Missionary Council (CIMI), a Catholic group

Telegraph