The Venezuelan government has launched a military operation aimed at expelling more than 10,000 illegal miners from the Amazon province in the south of the country, the Venezuelan president said today, noting that extraction has “destroyed” vital ecosystems.
“We are in the process of expelling more than 10,000 illegal miners with the physical presence of the Bolivarian National Armed Forces (FANB),” said the head of state at a military ceremony in Caracas.
Nicolás Maduro said that the increase in mining activity “destroys the Amazon (…) and Venezuela”, referring to the military detachments destined to liberate the territory bordering Brazil and Colombia, and the “gardens of the citizens of Venezuela”.
General Domingo Hernandez Larez, who is in charge of Venezuelan military operations, said that over the past weekend, 1,281 people left the region voluntarily.
The Armed Forces launched Operation “Autana 2023” in Yapacana, the country’s largest national park (320,000 hectares) where a “humanitarian channel” was created to remove miners, as well as family members who accompany foreign workers in an irregular area. Situation.
The province has miners from Colombia, Brazil and Ecuador.
Pictures released by the military show the “sometimes irreparable” damage to areas of forest and rivers, which have been practically destroyed through illegal extraction.
In an interview with AFP in June, residents of Venezuela’s Amazonia province noted the progress of illegal ore mining in these areas.
On the other hand, residents said that many diseases, including cancer, afflict more residents of the region as a result of eating fish from rivers contaminated with mercury used in gold extraction.
The NGO Orinoco has warned that 2,227 hectares in Yapacana (equivalent to 3,200 soccer fields) will be destroyed due to illegal mining in 2020.
