Colin Firth launches campaign to save ‘Earth’s most threatened tribe’ 25 April (SURVIVAL FOR TRIBAL PEOPLE)

Many Awá are still uncontacted, and they are running for their lives. 

‘One man has the power to stop the loggers: Brazil’s Minister of Justice. But it’s just not his priority. Let’s push it up his list.’ — Colin Firth

Oscar-winning film star Colin Firth today launched a major Survival International campaign to save ‘Earth’s most threatened tribe’ – the Awá of the Brazilian Amazon.

 The centerpiece of the campaign is a short film, featuring an appeal by Colin Firth and music by Grammy-winning composer Heitor Pereira.

 The Awá are a small tribe whose territory has been invaded by a vast army of illegal loggers, ranchers and settlers. Astonishing graphics on the campaign website show the devastating destruction of the Indians’ forest – which is happening faster than any other Amazon tribe.

The situation is now so critical that several Brazilian experts have spoken of a ‘genocide’ and ‘extinction’.

DO MORE THAN JUST WATCH OR READ - SEE WHAT IS POSSIBLE:  http://www.survivalinternational.org/awa#intro-film


 There are around 360 contacted Awá. Many are the survivors of brutal massacres.

It is believed that 20-25% more are hiding in the rapidly-shrinking forest, desperately seeking a refuge from the constant destruction. The campaign aims to persuade Brazil’s Justice Minister to send in federal police to clear out the loggers, ranchers and settlers, and keep them out.

 In his appeal Colin Firth says, ‘The Awá’s forest is being illegally cut for timber. When the loggers see them, they kill them. Their bows and arrows are no match for guns. And at any other time in history, that’s where it would end. Another people wiped off the face of the earth, forever. But we’re going to make sure the world doesn’t let that happen…

Colin Firth: 'They're killing us': world's most endangered tribe cries for help Gethin Chamberlain The Observer, Saturday 21 April 2012

Logging companies keen to exploit Brazil's rainforest have been accused by human rights organisations of using gunmen to wipe out the Awá, a tribe of just 355. Survival International, with backing from Colin Firth, is campaigning to stop what a judge referred to as 'genocide'

Trundling along the dirt roads of the Amazon, the giant logging lorry dwarfed the vehicle of the investigators following it. The trunks of nine huge trees were piled high on the back – incontrovertible proof of the continuing destruction of the world's greatest rainforest and its most endangered tribe, the Awá. Yet as they travelled through the jungle early this year, the small team from Funai – Brazil's National Indian Foundation – did not dare try to stop the loggers; the vehicle was too large and the loggers were almost certainly armed.

All they could do was video the lorry and add the film to the growing mountain of evidence showing how the Awá – with only 355 surviving members, more than 100 of whom have had no contact with the outside world – are teetering on the edge of extinction. It is a scene played out throughout the Amazon as the authorities struggle to tackle the powerful illegal logging industry.

But it is not just the loss of the trees that has created a situation so serious that it led a Brazilian judge, José Carlos do Vale Madeira, to describe it as "a real genocide". People are pouring on to the Awá's land, building illegal settlements, running cattle ranches.

Hired gunmen – known as pistoleros – are reported to be hunting Awá who have stood in the way of land-grabbers. Members of the tribe describe seeing their families wiped out. Human rights campaigners say the tribe has reached a tipping point and only immediate action by the Brazilian government to prevent logging can save the tribe.

This week Survival International will launch a new campaign to highlight the plight of the Awá, backed by Oscar-winning actor Colin Firth. In a video to be launched on Wednesday, Firth will ask the Brazilian government to take urgent action to protect the tribe. The 51-year-old, who starred in last year's hit movie The King's Speech, and came to prominence playing Mr Darcy in the 1995 BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, delivers an appeal to camera calling on Brazil's minister of justice to send in police to drive out the loggers.

READ MORE:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/22/brazil-rainforest-awa-endangered-tribe