BackThe Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), based in Washington (USA), accepted the request for rovisional measures from the Federal Public Defenders' Office (DPU) to guarantee the rights of the Tapeba indigenous people of Caucaia, a municipality in the metropolitan region of Fortaleza, in the state of Ceará. Resolution 28/2024, issued on 9 May 2024, requires the Brazilian State to adopt necessary measures to protect the life and personal integrity of members of this people.
In the action, the Public Defenders' Office highlights the occurrence of "episodes of violence and threats by organized crime and the police, as well as expulsions from their villages due to the lack of completion of the demarcation and protection of their territory". The reports point to murders, assaults, intimidation, destruction of property and use of firearms within the Tapeba communities.
According to the DPU, more than 7,000 members of the Tapeba people are distributed in 20 villages in the territory located in what currently corresponds to the municipality of Caucaia, state of Ceará. Since the 1980s, these people have sought the demarcation of the territory, a process that remains unfinished. The perimeter of the Indigenous Land has already been declared in Ordinance no. 734/2017, by the Ministry of Justice.
Federal defender Daniela Brauner, who worked in the case within the Department of Support for Actions in the Inter-American System of Human Rights – ISHR, explains that the request for provisional measures is a renewal of previous requests due to the intensification of violence in the locality. She points out that this decision is important to give visibility to the way the Brazilian State has treated the rights of the Tapeba indigenous people, especially with regard to the delay in the land demarcation process.
The regional human rights defender in Ceará, Edilson Santana, points out that, in addition to the requests for provisional measures, the DPU's efforts involved more than 10 lawsuits, requests to the Supreme Federal Court (STF) and an intense work
of out-of-court legal assistance within the land conflicts commission. "The decision is also important to reaffirm the importance of free legal assistance and its effects within the international system, since it is the first case in which measures have been granted with the DPU as the petitioner," he said.
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Source: The Federal Public Defender's Office, Brazil
