AFP, 05/21/2012
RIO DE JANEIRO — Brazil said Monday it was working hard to stop illegal logging in Amazon rainforest land inhabited by the ethnic Awa people, a group said to be threatened with extinction.
“The Brazilian state must accomplish this task with the utmost determination and we are working hard on it,” Maria do Rosario, the minister in charge of human rights, told foreign reporters.
A Brazilian government survey estimates there could be “up to 4,500 invaders, ranchers, loggers and settlers” occupying just one of the four territories inhabited by the Awa, whose total population stands at no more than 450.
