According to Reuters, the Brazilian Air Force revealed that they had to take action by firing warning shots at a plane and compelling it to land for violating a no-fly ban over the Yanomami Indigenous reservation. This is where illegal gold miners have been returning despite the government’s efforts to keep them away.
The Air Force released a video showing two bursts of machine gun fire being fired during the interdiction on Monday. This was to warn the pilot of the unregistered plane – a single-engine Cessna 182 – to change course and land.
After landing on an earthen airstrip, the pilot managed to escape into the rainforest while evading the Federal Police who had arrived to seize the plane, as per an Air Force Statement.
It remains uncertain whether the plane was involved in illegal gold mining, although such activity has resumed in the protected reservation despite a government operation last year to remove around 20,000 illegal miners.
The Air Force has faced criticism for not enforcing the no-fly zone that was ordered by the government of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Jan. 30 last year.
As the military scaled back its support for the government crackdown, the gold-seeking miners have returned, exacerbating a humanitarian crisis that is causing the Yanomami to suffer from flu, malaria, malnutrition, and violence in the isolated Amazon rainforest.
Environmental enforcers stated in December that unregistered planes were being used to fly miners back into the reservation due to the ineffective ban on flights.
(Reporting by Anthony Boadle; Editing by Sandra Maler)
