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The Cost of Justice
The following article was taken from the International YWAMer Magazine Feb/Mar 2008 edition. YWAM Brazil risks it all to fight for life “We all stopped and consulted with one another because we were talking about people’s futures and careers,” remembers YWAM America’s director Jim Stier. It was the summer of 2005 and YWAM Brazil was facing a lawsuit and a very tough decision. It was the next step in a long journey that began in 1984 when YWAMer Braulia Ribeiro first made contact with the Suruwaha tribe deep in the Brazilian jungle. Life with the Surawaha Soon after Braulia’s initial contact, a small team of YWAMers, led by linguists Edson and Marcia Suzuki, began living with the tribe. “We lived with the Surawaha, learned their language, at their food, participated in their festivals and learned how to wear our clothes and paint our bodies as they do,” Marcia explains. The Suzukis also helped the Indians with health care and community development, and Edson is considered a tribal elder by the Surawaha. In the early years of their immersion in the Suruwaha life, the YWAM team prayed for direction. “We discovered the essence of our task,” the Suzukis explain. “We were called to be witnesses of Jesus and communicate who He is, not commission a new religion or reproduce a western pattern of thinking and behaviour. The task suddenly became very simple, but at the same time unpredictably scary.” The team never formally evangelized, conducted services, preached or held Bible studies. “We just lived among the people and tried to testify of the gospel through acts and words of love.” But with Brazil’s political climate of cultural relativism and forced segregation of tribal people, trouble was on the way. Born to Die The Suruwaha are a small tribe of 120 people, isolated from the outside world by geography, language and culture. As with all people groups, Suruwaha life has a dark side. The tribe believes that babies born with a physical defect have no soul, and that it is a curse to give birth to more than one baby at a time. According to tribal custom, parents of deformed babies or twins must kill them for the greater good of the tribe. This practice of infanticide takes a horrible toll on families and in anguish over the killing of their infants, many adult Suruwaha commit suicide. The population of the tribe is declining, and Marcia says this has led to collective depression. “To live among the Suruwaha is life living among survivors in a refugee camps,” she says. “We’ve seen babies born, grow, get married and have babies of their own. But we’ve also mourned the Suruwaha dead with them, and wept when someone committed suicide and died in our arms.” A Girl Names “Smile” But all that began to change a few years ago. Hakani (“Smile” in the Suruwaha language) was born in 1995 with a growth deficiency. When the child was still unable to walk or talk at the age of two, her parents were ordered by tribal leaders to poison her. Hakani’s parents couldn’t bring themselves to kill their little girl and committed suicide, as did Hakani’s grandfather when the task of poisoning her fell to him. Often left in the jungle and abandoned in the tribe’s communal house with no hammock or food to her. Incredibly, she survived for three years before Marcia and Edson were permitted to help her. The Suzukis begged FUNASA, the Brazilian government’s Indian Health Department, to let them take Hakani off Suruwaha land to get medical help, but they were refused permission. Despite the possible consequences, the Suzukis took Hakani out of the jungle for treatment. Hakani blossomed, and a year later she was able to walk and talk. The Suzukis legally adopted her. Two other couples on the Suruwaha team, Moises and Lucilia and Darcy and Sandra, also adopted Suruwaha children that were destined for infanticide. When Marcia took Hakani back to the Suruwaha, the tribe was amazed. “We adopted Hakani and she has made all the difference, not only for us, but for the tribe,” Marcia says. “When they saw Hakani healed, they understood that every child has a soul and has the right to live.” The Good Fight In June of 2005, two Suruwaha families approached the YWAM team and asked for help. Contrary to centuries of tradition, they wanted to get medical care for their disabled daughters rather than killing them. Getting the children what they needed was easier said than done. FUNAI, the Brazilian government’s department of Indian affairs, tries its best to maintain tight control of the country’s tribal population. Isolated Indians are not permitted to leave their tribal land without FUNAI’s permission, and the involvement of “outsiders” with the tribes is strongly discouraged. In the name of preserving all Indian cultural practices, the government routinely lets Suruwaha children be killed rather than advocating for their right to survive. Surprisingly, YWAM received written permission from local FUNAI and FUNASA officials to take the children to Sao Paolo for treatment. But in the name of protecting Suruwaha culture, the national offices for both organizations reversed the decision and chose instead to refuse the girls treatment and send them back to the tribe, where government officials knew they would be killed. YWAM Brazil now had a difficult decision before them: obey the government and return the families to the tribe where the girls would certainly be killed, or take a stand for justice. “We felt we had to take up their cause; we decided that if it costs us all we have in Brazil, then that’s what it would cost,” says Jim Stier. YWAM consulted with human rights attorneys and discovered that Brazil’s treatment of its isolated Indian tribes violates at least 22 points of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights. “It fixes the Native Americans in a position of inferiority to the point that they have to get permission from the government Indian agency to leave tribal land to study, travel, or anything. “ Jim explains, “Their human rights are violated, and these parents didn’t have the right to seek medical care they wanted for their children.” A Brazilian church paid to have the girls and their families transport to Sao Paolo where the children, name Titutu and Iganani, underwent testing in preparation for corrective treatment. Titutu, and hermaphrodite, would require surgery and ongoing hormone treatment, but the government told her parents that continued treatment would prevent her from living a normal life among the tribe and that it would be better for her to be killed. They issued an injunction against the government-run hospital that forbade them from performing the surgery. Diagnosed with cerebral palsy, Iganani would also require long-term therapy to overcome her handicap, but again the government stated that saving the girls would be an illegal intervention by YWAM in the tribe’s culture. Braulia Riberiro says that, as a rule, YWAM Brazil doesn’t get involved in politics. “But we prayed and decided to move ahead, because there’s no point in being a Christian organization if we can’t face issues of injustice up front.” Counting the Cost YWAM altered the Brazilian media to the story of the Suruwaha girls’ plight, and YWAM was suddenly thrust into the national spotlight. Media coverage was intense. YWAM, FUNAI, the girls and their families were closely scrutinized, but YWAM continued to push forward in its efforts to get the children the medical care they needed. In the process, the government did everything it could to force the parents to give up; they were forced to live in substandard government housing, were refused an interpreter, and were buried under bureaucratic red tape. But they stood firm. Titutu’s parents told the Attorney General, “We are not animals. We’re people like you and our children deserve the same treatment as yours.” Finally, Titutu underwent corrective surgery and Iganani continued receiving therapy for her cerebral palsy. The battle was won, but the war was far from over. A few years before the situation with the Suruwaha girls arose, the New Tribes Mission was sued for similar involvement with another Brazilian Indian tribe and fined US$50 million. YWAM Brazil has also been sued and could still face a comparable fine. “We have a lot at stake” Braulia says. “Its’ not a simple thing.” Continuing Forward So why get involved at all? Expulsion from all Indian tribes, lawsuits, fines, criminal charges… the price YWAM Brazil could pay for its advocacy for the Suruwaha is enormously high. “The decision to get involved was made by YWAM Brazil as a whole,” says Braulia. Marcia adds, “Our team and our base members went through a long process before making this decision. We knew we would be going against very strong national tradition. We knew the government would be against us. We knew the Indians were not seen as citizens and that their voice wouldn’t be heard by outsiders. But we had no choice. We had been living with the Indians for such a long time, they had become part of our family, and we had to be consistent with the message we had been preaching all those years. We had to obey the word of the Lord to stand by their side, to open our mouth for the dumb, and for the cause of all the children.” YWAM Brazil continues to move forward in its fight for the rights for the indigenous people. The Suzukis established an NGO called Voice for Life or “ATINI” (“voice” in the Suruwaha language), dedicated to exposing infanticide among indigenous peoples and finding a solution to the problem. Currently, Brazil’s Indian rights laws are very ambiguous; indigenous children can be classified either as children or as Indians. Braulia Ribeiro says, “My question to the government has be, ‘Are the Indians human? Is Brazil placing them above or below humanity in a way that human rights don’t apply to them?’ If we’re doing, it’s totally wrong.” The situation with the Suruwaha has brought new attention to Indian issues in Brazil. The summer of 2007, a member of Congress offered to present a bill to the legislature, and asked Marcia to write it. Edson, Marcia and a team of human rights experts wrote the proposed bill, which will eliminate the ambiguity of the current law and actually make it illegal for outsiders not to intervene when an Indian child’s life is at stake. It still won’t be illegal for Indians to kill their children, but if a non-Indian has an opportunity to save the child and does not, they could go to jail. The proposed bill is named “Muwaji’s Law” after Iganani’s mother Muwaji, the first Suruwaha mother to step forward and ask for equal rights for her child. If passed, it will be a huge shift. “It will criminalize indifference and cultural relativism,” says Braulia. ‘It’s a big cultural change in Brazil’s indigenous policy; it will be the opposite of the current law forbidding interference.” U.N. Connection In February 2007, Marcia joined a delegation from YWAM Harpenden attending the United Nations’ 51st session of the Commission of the Status of Women. The YWAM delegation was lobbying specifically for the elimination of infanticide and violence against children among indigenous tribes in the Amazon region in Brazil. Miraculously, Marcia had the opportunity to speak directly with the Chief of the Brazilian Mission at the UN. The minister had already read the ATINI booklet about infanticide in the tribes, and after listening to Marcia, asked her what she wanted her to do. “I was puzzled by the question,” says Marcia, “and of course I wasn’t prepared for it.” Noticing Marcia’s hesitation, the minister asked, “Do you want me to add a mention of the tribal infanticide as a violation of the rights of the girl child?” “I said, ‘Yes, exactly!’ In many Brazilian tribes girls are killed only on the basis of gender.” The minister’s assistant asked Marcia to write a few lines to help find the right language for the resolution. “I wrote it, and the assistant sent it immediately to the minister.” The final document had to be finished in the next couple of days – it seemed impossible, but the minister said she would try. I never go to talk to the minister again,” says Marcia, “but she was able to include a short mention of the infanticide in the final document. It was really a miracle!” The UN has yet to vote on the resolution, but the possible international implications of its passage are enormous. “It’s an achievement that’s going to have repercussions even in places like India and China and other nations that deal with the infanticide of girls,” says Braulia. The Bottom Line: Justice YWAM Brazil didn’t choose to help the Indians just to make a point. As Jim Stier says, “These are people groups that are going to be around the throne in heaven, so we can’t compromise or draw back on this. So we kept working, but we always tried to have the highest standards because we knew from the very beginning that the government was watching us.” To that end, YWAMers are working among Brazil’s tribes pursued linguistic training with Wycliffe. They also got missiological training to gain understanding of cultures and how to preserve their dignity and social integrity. YWAM Brazil realized this is not an easy task. “What precipitated taking these two little girls out is that their families came to us and asked us to so their children would have not to be killed,” Jim Stier explains. “It’s excruciatingly difficult to make these decisions because without meaning to you can destroy their societal fabric of the tribe by creating a conflict of authority. We really try not to do that, and at the same time show them the love of Christ. These are not simple issues.” Fruit that Remains The potential cost of YWAM Brazil’s involvement with the Suruwaha may be great, but so is the fruit. In addition to the bill awaiting a Brazilian congressional vote and the pending UN resolution, Braulia, her husband Reinaldo Rierio (director of the Porto Velho Base), the YWAM Suruwaha team and a human rights specialist attended a congressional hearing where they were able to confront FUNAI and FUNASA about their handling of the case of the Suruwaha girls. Even in the midst of the governmental persecution that could result in the destruction of YWAM Brazil as an institution, the Suruwaha situation has created unity among Brazilian Christians. “The church rose up together with us, and YWAM was on the cover of all the Christian magazines in the country,” says Braulia. “There was a revival of awareness about the Indian tribes and missions and a new awareness in the church that they could not be silent accomplices in what was happening.” Most importantly, Braulia emphasizes, it triggered a change of Brazilian Christian mindset, and won a victory against the secular/sacred divide. YWAM Brazil used to have difficulty finding YWAMers interested in working among the tribes, but in their current school they have 30 people who want to work with the Indians. Many other missions are experience things same harvest of workers. Jim Stier is optimistic about the Suruwaha’s future. “We have strong allies in the tribe,” he says. “We’re not trying to lead this; we’re trying to set it up so they can lead it, and it’s starting coalesce. We have high hopes that they will be accorded their full human rights within the next several years, and our first concrete step is proposed new law against infanticide.” Strength to Stand Over the years, YWAM port Velho continued to work with the Suruwaha full-time. It has been a long, rough road but worth every step, Braulia says. “We had to give these people voice and strength to stand by them as they confront the government. That’s Christian faith – God gives you more so you can share, more strength so you can be strong for others. We don’t see YWAM as being the great saviour of the Indians, but as ones who stand alongside them as they fight their fight for justice.” For more information about ATINI’s work to protect Brazil’s tribal children, please visit http://voiceforlife.blogspot.com YWAMer Magazine March 2008 By Stacey Jillson with reporting by Robert Itzen
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