Isac was only 24 years old when he was murdered last Friday by the Brazilian military police
February 19, 2021
Camila Rossi
Last Friday, February 12th, Isac Tembé left his home on the Alto Rio Guama Indigenous Territory, in the northeast of the Amazonian state of Pará, to go hunting nearby with a group of friends. He never returned. The young Indigenous leader was murdered; shot point-blank in the chest by a member of Brazil s military police, on his own land.
According to the Tembé-Theneteraha people, the country s military police serve as private militias defending the interests of farmers and ranchers that are illegally occupying areas of the Tembé Indigenous Territory. This case illustrates the blurring of Brazilian agribusiness and state-sponsored terror on Indigenous lands, which has sharply exacerbated under the Bolsonaro regime.