Venezuelan soldiers destroyed a camp used for illegal mining in the state of Amazonas (southern, bordering Brazil and Colombia), the operational strategic commander of the Bolivarian National Armed Forces (FANB), Domingo Hernández Lárez, reported this Thursday.
“(The) FANB carried out land patrol and surveillance operations in the sector called ‘Yagua’, in the Atabapo municipality of the Amazonas state, carrying out the location, dismantling and destruction of a camp for illegal mining,” the military indicated in his account. of X.
Likewise, he noted that an electrical plant, an engine, a kitchen, a scale, a radio charger, 80 kilos of food and “logistical materials for illegal mining” were seized at the site.
Hernández Lárez did not specify whether any people were detained during this operation.
“It is worth highlighting that the fight is not limited to persecuting and evicting illegal miners (…) the fight is to convince them and create awareness that their actions will bring greater evils to the human species and nature,” he said.
https://twitter.com/dhernandezlarez/status/1780915537934987622
Through these operations, the FANB has “evicted and evacuated from the special protection areas more than 7,000 illegal miners who are predators of the environment, for dedicating themselves to arbitrary and uncontrolled ecocide, disrespecting territorial planning,” said Hernández Lárez, on December 14. March.
According to the FANB, more than 2,500 soldiers are deployed in national parks, forest reserves and hydrographic basins on missions against illegal mining.
On March 31, the NGO Clima21 asked the Government to ratify the Minamata Convention, with the aim of establishing a plan to completely eliminate the use of mercury in the mining sector.
The organization maintained that there is currently an absence of “effective, timely, sufficient and continuous” responses to the problem represented by mercury contamination derived from small and medium-sized mining.
Caracas / EFE
