Murder rate of Brazil Indians rises sharply-Church

BRASILIA, Brazil, May 31 (Reuters) The number of Indians killed in Brazil has risen sharply in the past three years due mostly to intensifying land conflicts, the Roman Catholic Church said.

A report by the Indigenous Missionary Council, or Cimi yesterday, said a growing Indian population, an expanding agricultural frontier and an insufficient demarcation of Indian lands were to blame for more land-related conflicts.

''We talk about violence against Indians as a thing of the past but this type of atrocity continues today under our own eyes,'' Bishop Odilo Pedro Scherer told journalists.

Between 2003 and 2005, 122 Indians were killed, compared with 42 during the previous three years, the church watchdog said in its report.

In addition, 73 Indians committed suicide and an additional 799 died of malnutrition or inadequate health care between 2003 and 2005, the report said. Brazil has an Indian population of about 450,000.

''These numbers are shocking,'' said Tim Cahill, a Brazil researcher for Amnesty International. ''The banner of (President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's) government was the fight against hunger but there are Indian children dying of hunger -- it's startling.'' Most of the killings were blamed on gunmen hired by ranchers and Indians fighting among themselves, the report said.

The majority of the deaths occurred in the southwestern state of Mato Grosso do Sul. There, opposing tribes or families often inhabit the same reserves and displaced Indians camp along motorways or in shantytowns, said Saulo Feitosa, Cimi's vice president.

''Their confinement is leading them to be killed or kill each other,'' Feitosa said. ''This government has reduced the demarcation of lands and that is breeding more violence.'' Indian reservations account for approximately 12 percent of Brazil's territory but many of them are in thinly populated remote areas of the Amazon rain forest.

The report's authors say state and federal governments were paternalistic toward Indians.

''They hand out food baskets but deny them their ancestral lands,'' said Lucia Helena Rangel, professor of anthropology at the Pontifical Catholic University in Sao Paulo.

The government's National Indians Foundation said the Lula administration had maintained the rate of demarcation of previous governments. The ''complicated'' land rights situation in Mato Grosso do Sul distorted the report's figures and was not indicative of the Indians' situation nationwide, a spokeswoman said.

Reuters VJ VP0433