ANNOUNCER: Tonight
on FRONTLINE/World, two Stories from a Small
Planet.
In Iraq... As the trial
of Saddam Hussein unfolds in a Baghdad courtroom...
Reporter Gwynne Roberts takes
an 800 mile journey across a war ravaged country...
GWYNNE
ROBERTS, Reporter: There has been a bomb explosion just around the
corner from the hotel...
ANNOUNCER:
...To unearth an unsolved mass murder.
DR.
MOHAMMED IHSAN: This is the truth. We should tell the truth…
ANNOUNCER:
Tonight, "Saddam's Road to Hell," the search for evidence
of war crimes.
ANNOUNCER:
And in Brazil... Who should control what may be the richest diamond
mine in the world?
MARIANA
VAN ZELLER, Reporter: These trees were cleared by wildcat
miners who’ve come in search of the Amazon’s latest treasure:
diamonds.
ANNOUNCER:
Deep in the Amazon rain forest, and Indian tribe fights to protect what
they say is theirs.
Iraq: Saddam's
Road To Hell
Reported
by Gwynne Roberts
GWYNNE ROBERTS, Reporter:
The road to the oil city of Kirkuk in Northern Iraq and the threat of
insurgents attacking this road at night is very real.
This man is on a sensitive
mission.
He is investigating the case
of thousands of Kurds who disappeared twenty two years ago, never to
be heard of again.
He is Dr. Mohammed Ihsan, Kurdish
Minister for Human Rights.
DR. MOHAMMED IHSAN, Kurdish
Human Rights Minister: [subtitles]
Some 8,000 Barzani Kurds were taken from 4 government camps in Kurdistan.
I think my main role is to find out where these people are. I am looking
for an answer for it.
GWYNNE ROBERTS:
And Dr. Ihsan’s quest will take him on an 800 mile journey through
a country teetering on the edge of civil war.
The case which Dr. Ihsan is
putting together is a vital part of the indictment aginst Saddam Hussein.
But this case is particularly
significant.
All the missing men and boys
were members of one powerful Kurdish clan, the Barzanis.
Their abduction marks the point
when Saddam’s regime moved from isolated acts of brutality to mass
murder.
DR. IHSAN: [subtitles]
Pull over, pull over.
GWYNNE ROBERTS:
Dr. Ihsan is meeting a former Iraqi secret policeman a few
miles from Kirkuk.
In countless secret meetings
like this, Dr. Ihsan has been gathering the evidence he needs to unravel
the mystery of the missing Barzanis.
The documents are explicit
and provide crucial evidence about the fate of the Barzanis.
DR. IHSAN: This
is a very important document…it is from Colonel Hakis Ma'il to the
Director of Political Affairs in Iraqi General Security Office. It says
that at the beginning of August 1983 Barzanis were executed in Bussia
area which is near Saudi border.
GWYNNE ROBERTS:
But just how reliable are these documents? And exactly what happened
to the Barzanis?
Some of the Barzani families
who survived the abduction now live deep in the Kurdish mountains.
Dr. Ihsan has come to Hardan
village to meet them.
All lost sons, fathers and
husbands.
All believe their loved ones
may one day return to them.
DR. IHSAN: [subtitles]
How many of your family are missing?
FIRST BARZANI WOMAN:
[subtitles] 6 members of my family are missing. My 5 sons
and my husband. My husband's name is Marku. My sons are
Othman, Abdullah, Karim, Awni and Aziz. Othman was the oldest.
SECOND BARZANI WOMAN:
[subtitles] My husband was a practicing Muslim. He didn't
drink, smoke, nor do anything bad. He was good with his family.
He was educated and quiet. If someone is good, quiet and handsome, isn't
that enough? What else could a woman want? What else can I say?
THIRD BARZANI WOMAN:
[subtitles] Sadeq was very good. There was nothing wrong with
him. He was perfect. The other one, Taha was very kind to his children.
When he got back from work, he used to hug and kiss me. The other one
was the same.
GWYNNE ROBERTS:
The suffering of these women is the driving force behind Dr. Ihsan’s
investigation.
The search for the missing
Barzanis was authorized by Masoud Barzaani, clan leader and now president
of the Kurdish region. He lost thirty-seven members of his own family.
The attack on the Barzani clan
followed his decision to side with Iran against Iraq in the early 1980s.
MASOUD BARZANI, President,
Kurdistan: [subtitles]
Of course, at that time, there was the Iran-Iraq War. Our fight with
Iraq started before and continued after.
GWYNNE ROBERTS:
During the war, his partisan army played an important role in the conflict,
helping to pin down the Iraqi army in the north.
Saddam never forgave him.
He took his revenge on innocent
Barzani civilians who were living in government camps like this one.
MASOUD BARZANI:
[subtitles] Even if we did help Iran, those Barzani civilians
were not responsible for our policy.
LITTLE GIRL:
[subtitles] I hope to hold a gun, Among the soldiers and advance,
To hear the victory songs, And the raising of the flags.
GWYNNE ROBERTS:
Just one month after the Barzani Kurds were taken, Saddam admitted publicly
his regime was involved in their disappearance.
DR. IHSAN: This
is in September 1983. These Kurds were summoned by Saddam to listen
to his speech. Really, this was broadcast all over Iraq and recorded
off-air at the time. It establishes Saddam's guilt beyond doubt.
SADDAM HUSSEIN: [subtitles]
The Barzanis spread their treachery to other families. They
are involved in this crime and became guides for the Persian Army and
helped them occupy Iraqi land. Some, who were called Barzanis, cooperated
with them. So, they've been severely punished and have gone to hell.
GWYNNE ROBERTS:
Saddam’s abduction of the Barzanis was the precursor of his infamous
Anfal campaign, when his forces attacked Kurdish villages often using
poison gas.
More than 100,000 Kurdish men,
women and children were killed in the late 1980s.
Dr. Ihsan is launching an expedition
from Arbil in Norrthern Iraq to the southern deserts near the Saudi
border.
He is looking for crucial forensic
evidence in the case against Saddam – the bodies of the missing Barzanis.
It’s a dangerous journey,
even at the outset.
GWYNNE ROBERTS:
There has been a bomb explosion just around the corner from the hotel.
I can’t see anything but
the main thing is clearly over here.
They are worried there is another
bomb, I think.
GWYNNE ROBERTS:
A suicide bomber kills 70 and injures 120 in a queue of young Kurds
waiting to join the police.
Despite the constant danger,
the expedition gets underway.
It’s May and our journey
will take four weeks.
Leaving Arbil behind, our convoy
heads south.
We have to drive first through
areas controlled by Sunni insurgents who regularly ambush vehicles along
this route, kidnapping and killing passengers at will.
DR. IHSAN: Here
is the most dangerous part of our journey really. Between Hamrin to
Khalas. One day I myself been attacked here by roughly about six
terrorist cars. They attacked us. They find that we are well defended,
well prepared. They run away. Just here.
GWYNNE ROBERTS:
Four hours later, the outskirts of Baghdad.
It looks so normal but the
insurgent attacks are at a record high and as we drive to the center
a car bomb kills 17 people.
We are staying at the Hotel
Babylon, and we’re worried about our security.
Across the river Tigris is
the Green Zone, a heavily guarded area housing the Iraqi government,
and the US Embassy.
We are outside this area and
have to provide our own protection.
Azad, Dr. Ihsan’s brother,
is head of security.
AZAD: I tell them,
Anybody after 12 that come to this, I am going to kill him. No excuse.
They say, OK, no problem. Nobody come. After 1 o’clock nobody come
to the 9th floor. Especially the side room. Nobody. Anybody
come after 12 o’clock I gotta kill ‘em. No excuse.
GWYNNE ROBERTS:
Our investigation takes us to an insurgent stronghold in the suburbs.
Dr. Ihsan is trying to track
down one of the main document shops in Baghdad.
These documents were looted
after Saddam’s downfall from one of the city’s main intelligence
headquarters, and they are all for sale.
GWYNNE ROBERTS:
Tell me how much do you pay for them?
DR. IHSAN: Really,
we paid a lot of money.
GWYNNE ROBERTS:
A lot of money?
DR. IHSAN: A lot
of money. We paid a lot of money to bribe these people. Otherwise there
is no chance for you to get them.
GWYNNE ROBERTS:
But wouldn't it maybe be better to destroy all these documents? Just
begin again.
DR. IHSAN: I don't
agree with that approach. We should face it. We should study it. We
should tell the truth to the people. This is Iraq and this is how Iraqis
behave in the past. We should tell the truth. This is the truth. This
is what we did. This is what all, the majority of Iraqis, involved in.
GWYNNE ROBERTS:
The Iraqi secret police were trained by the East German Stasi and had
a mania for recording everything they did – on paper, in sound and
on video tape.
We found evidence of this in
the market in central Baghdad.
These videos come from the
vaults of Saddam’s secret police.
Under Saddam, they were often
distributed publicly to extend the Baath rule of terror and, extraordinarily,
this still appears to be going on.
They show every form of cruelty
imaginable – from throwing prisoners off roof tops, to beatings, beheadings,
amputations and even blowing up prisoners with explosives.
GWYNNE ROBERTS:
Why do they sell this stuff in video stores? What's the purpose?
DR. IHSAN: You
know this film has been leaked to the market by Iraqi intelligence,
by Iraqi Mukhbarat, really. I think this is the way they are selling
their terror to people, and reminding them that 'We are still here and
this is the way we did it.'
DR. IHSAN: Really,
we get some important documents today regarding the case of our Barzanis.
For example, this one. It is a very critical one, really. It establishes
a direct link between Saddam Hussein and the murder of 8,000 Barzanis.
This document is dated 24 August, 1987, and the topic of this document
is Barzani families.
It is very clear and direct.
It is from the special secretary for Saddam Hussein to Ali Hassan Majid,
Chemical Ali. It is here, for example, it's been mentioned…(reads
in Arabic)...which means 'No-one knows the fate of these families except
the leadership of the State.
GWYNNE ROBERTS:
But this document is not enough. Dr. Ihsan needs to find the bodies
of the missing Barzanis.
DR. IHSAN:
[subtitles] What time tomorrow are we leaving?
MAYOR OF SALMAN:
[subtitles] 8:00, 8:30.
DR. IHSAN: [subtitles]
Why 8:30? Why not 5:30?
GWYNNE ROBERTS:
Ahead lies a 500-mile journey to the southern deserts through the triangle
of death just south of Baghdad.
DR. IHSAN: [subtitles]
We're not stopping until we get to Samawa.
GWYNNE ROBERTS:
This week, forty three Shia travelers were executed along this road.
It’s controlled by Al Quaeda
terrorists, sometimes operating in groups of up to 100 – strong.
They prey on traffic jams,
and Dr. Ihsan orders his drivers not to stop at any cost.
DR. IHSAN:
[subtitles] Don't delay. When you hear me, answer! Yes brother.
TALIB: [subtitles]
Be careful. Be careful.
BAYARD: [subtitles]
Azad be careful! Watch both sides!
AZAD: [subtitles]
Ok. Ok.
TALIB: [subtitles]
On the left, on the left. Be careful, be careful.
DR. IHSAN: [subtitles]
Try not to leave the line.
DR. IHSAN:
[subtitles] Azad, Azad, keep up Azad, Keep up.
JOHN: Apache.
DR. IHSAN: There
is something serious taking place here.
GWYNNE ROBERTS:
The Americans are showing interest in our convoy and there is concern
that they could strike without warning.
Being a government minister
offers no protection from American “friendly fire” attacks.
GWYNNE ROBERTS:
How much distance do you have keep from the Americans?
DR. IHSAN: [subtitles]
150 metres.
GWYNNE ROBERTS:
And if you go closer than that, they'll shoot?
DR. IHSAN: They'll
shoot you.
GWYNNE ROBERTS:
After traveling nearly 300 miles southwest of Baghdad, we reach a remote
desert fortress, Nugra Salman.
Thousands of Kurds, imprisoned
here during the Anfal campaign, are said to have died of thirst, starvation
and torture.
The Barzanis were apparently
held at Nugra before being moved deeper into the desert.
YOUNG MAN: [subtitles]
Me, two brothers, two sisters and my mother. My grandfather, grandmother,
two uncles and an aunt. We were driven in a bus down to Nugra Salman.
My young relative, Salman,
was beaten in front of me. Just imagine, I was 11 years old, and there
were even younger children watching.
OLD MAN: [subtitles]
When we arrived at Nugra, it was like a hell. It was so crowded.
There were women, children and old people there. It was full. Nugra
Salman was full.
GWYNNE ROBERTS:
Children were treated the same as adults.
The documents collected by
Dr. Ihsan show that amongst the abducted Barzanis were boys as young
as eight.
YOUNG MAN: [subtitles]
It was very hot in Nugra Salman. There was a football goal with two
metal bars. My uncle was tied to the bars all day. In the evening they
brought him back to the hall. The bars had scorched his back. This was
one form of torture, and there were certainly other worse forms we did
not see.
OLD MAN: [subtitles]
Some 1,000 out of 11,000 people here died. Those still alive were taken
away and just disappeared. I saw a long blue bus taking away the
young men. It returned empty 30-45 minutes later, and did it again.
That is a fact.
[subtitles]
I often asked God to take my soul. I begged God to put an end
to my life. I didn't want this life.
GWYNNE ROBERTS:
Dr. Ihsan’s earlier investigation has revealed that the Barzanis were
executed in the Bussia region about five hours drive southeast of the
prison. And it’s to there the convoy heads.
He is looking for eyewitnesses
who can lead him to their graves.
Bussia, the last Iraqi outpost
before the Saudi border.
And a village known to have
been once run by Saddam’s secret police.
It is inhabited mainly by the
Sunni Jasham tribe, once amongst Saddam’s closest supporters.
This is a region where distrust
runs deep between the Sunnis and local Shia.
Dr. Ihsan finds an important
witness. A shepherd called Abu Naif, who is Shia, and who worked as
an army driver in Bussia in 1983.
He confirms that the Barzanis
were executed near Bussia.
ABU NAIF: [subtitles]
A bus would come carrying 45 passengers. Every day it came at dawn
going to Abu Jid village. That is where the Kurds were. It returned
at nine o'clock. Next day it came in the morning again. It left in the
evening when they’d finished. They executed them all in one week.
GWYNNE ROBERTS:
A local shopkeeper, also Shia, has vivid memories of the day the executions
began.
HAJI JABBAR, Shia Shopkeeper:
[subtitles] On the day they moved the prisoners, a security officer
came, knocked on the door and came into my store. He took a piece of
cloth and some rope from me.
DR. IHSAN: [subtitles]
What type of cloth was it?
SHIA SHOPKEEPER:
[subtitles] White, white.
DR. IHSAN: [subtitles]
How big? A whole roll?
SHIA SHOPKEEPER:
[subtitles] Less than a roll. People buy this to use as a
shroud. They bury the dead in it. He said, 'We need this.'
GWYNNE ROBERTS:
The Shias are helpful, but the local Sunnis are not cooperating with
Dr. Ishan’s search.
He arranges a meeting with
the Sunni elders in Bussia to try to buy their assistance.
He suspects that they once
worked closely with Saddam’s secret police and know the exact location
of the Barzani graves.
DR. IHSAN: [subtitles]
Imagine. Imagine for 22 years, 8,000 Barzanis have been missing.
We need one of you to say, 'Man, come and dig here!
I promise I can give a big
reward to anyone who can help us find where they’re buried. I can
tell that you are hospitable and generous in spirit. No one can imagine
the size of the reward. The reward is money. The person who receives
it will be very happy…
BUSSIA SHEIKH: [subtitles]
Sorry to interrupt you. If anyone knows anything, . I swear by
God, they will tell you immediately. It is a great thing for God’s
work to help you. What does money mean? Nothing!
GWYNNE ROBERTS:
There is one conspicuous absentee, the village headman, the Mukhtar.
For 24 years, he was Saddam’s
main representative in Bussia and the community’s main link with the
security forces, the Mukhabarat.
His absence from the meeting
underlines the Sunni community’s distrust of our group.
The question now is – will
money break their silence?
DR. IHSAN: Eight
hundred just for that guy who was helping us till now, and 500 for the
guy who said, 'I will help you.' 400 for another guy….And 400 for
the guy to go back to Nasyria to get the tanker driver.
GWYNNE ROBERTS:
Next day, two Sunni bounty hunters come forward to claim their share
of the reward.
BOUNTY HUNTER:
[subtitles] This is the right way…not to the left or
right….Straight ahead.
GWYNNE ROBERTS:
The bounty hunters lead us to Abu Jid, a Bedouin encampment in the middle
of nowhere. They say they are convinced the Barzanis were executed
and buried here.
But our bulldozer finds nothing.
Another tip-off takes us 30
miles further into the desert.
After digging late into the
night and finding nothing, a mood of desperation sets in.
DR. IHSAN: [subtitles]
How many of you think there is something here? Just guess,
guess...
POLICEMAN: [subtitles]
My guess - nothing.
1ST ARAB: [subtitles]
I can't say...
2nd ARAB: [subtitles]
Nothing...
3rd ARAB: [subtitles]
We expect something, but we find nothing.
DR. IHSAN: [subtitles]
Do you expect something?
2nd POLICEMAN: [subtitles]
I expect something.
DR. IHSAN: [subtitles]
I think we will try…
GWYNNE ROBERTS:
You are going to do this bit here, yah?
DR. IHSAN: I will
do this bit here too.
GWYNNE ROBERTS:
But again the bulldozer turns up nothing.
DR. IHSAN: Most
of the information we have so far is second hand information. Because
none of the informer himself dare to stand up and tell that this is
what happened. Because most of them were taking part of it. The majority
of them were part of the regime, and they were working for the regime
at that time through police department, through customs, through border
guards.
GWYNNE ROBERTS:
Do you think some will have participated in the killing?
DR. IHSAN: I am
sure. Definitely. This is why they don't dare to face us.
GWYNNE ROBERTS:
After 15 days of digging, Dr. Ihsan is running out of options.
We are short of food, water
and hope.
Back in Bussia there is unwelcome
news.
Insurgents are circling the
village monitoring our movements.
We are forced to abandon our
search and return to the north.
TALIB:
[subtitles] Get your guns ready!
Wide of convoy crossing desert
GWYNNE ROBERTS:
Dr. Ihsan’s investigation, which has lasted 14 years, seems to have
come to nothing.
FADE TO BLACK
GWYNNE ROBERTS:
But five months later, Dr.
Ihsan is called back to Bussia.
His Shia contacts finally locate
three mass graves.
All of them just a few hundred
feet away from where he’d searched back in May.
The remains of five hundred
Kurds are recovered, all of them believed to be Barzanis.
DR. IHSAN: I think
this is concrete evidence that this belonged to the Barzani Kurds because
this is what they wear on all days. Even today they are wearing the
same clothes. The name is Shalu Shapiq.
You can see that he’s been
blind folded, I think this is another male that has been blindfolded
before killing.
GWYNNE ROBERTS:
All of this will now be used as evidence in Saddam’s trial in Baghdad.
DR. IHSAN: I think
there will be no way with this country after all what we have been through.
Forget it. I personally don't think there is any hope, any hope that
we can live together.
Bumper
ANNOUNCER:
Next, in Brazil, a journey into the Amazon, and a violent conflict
over diamonds.
Brazil: Jewel
Of The Amazon
Reported
by: Mariana van Zeller
MARIANA VAN ZELLER, Reporter:
This road through the Amazon is not on any of Brazil’s official maps.
It’s one of hundreds of paths that have been cut through the country’s
rainforest in recent years for timber and ranchland.
MARIANA: [subtitles]
What are we seeing here on the right?
POLICEMAN: [subtitles]
The forest is being turned into grazing land. It’s sad to see
this…
MARIANA VAN ZELLER:
But this is not what has brought Brazil’s federal police deep into
the jungle….
These trees were cleared by
wildcat miners who’ve come in search of the Amazon’s latest treasure:
diamonds.
In the last few years, more
than a billion dollars in diamonds has been extracted from this forest…
and if the big mining companies are allowed in, many believe this could
become the richest diamond mine in the world.
The problem is that the diamonds
are on the reservation of the Cinta Larga Indian tribe… and mining
is illegal on all of Brazil’s Indian lands…
Since diamonds were first discovered
here in the late 1990’s, a black market has thrived. But now
this special unit of Brazil’s federal police has been sent in to shut
it down…
They’ve moved into this camp
just outside the Cinta Larga reservation….
We’ve been granted rare access
to film with them…
Police chief Mauro Sposito
is the head of special operations in the Amazon….
He tries to explain how the
Cinta Larga’s diamond trade works….
MAURO SPOSITO,
Chief of Police: [subtitles]
A diamond mined here was sold for $8,000. Later it was resold
to a middleman for $25,000, who then passed it on to a buyer in Sao
Paulo, who was selling the diamond for $250,000, when we seized it.
MARIANA VAN ZELLER:
In the towns that surround
the Cinta Larga indian reservation, the federal police told us….
Diamonds have become a boom business…
Locals act as middlemen, buying
diamonds from the Indians and the miners, then selling to big buyers
who fly into the Amazon from around the country, and around the world…
chasing the promise of very cheap, very pure diamonds…
MARIANA
VAN ZELLER: [subtitles]
So, we’re set?
MARIANA VAN ZELLER:
A buyer agreed to take me on a tour of the diamond black market here
as long as I didn’t identify him…
BUYER: [subtitles]
There are usually some buyers here. There is one
in a red shirt, and one in a green shirt.”
MARIANA: [subtitles]
“They are buyers?”
BUYER: [subtitles]
Yes
MARIANA VAN ZELLER:
The diamond trade is thriving here , this buyer later told me at his
house… even as the government threatens to step in….
MARIANA: This
diamond came out of the reserve in the last week. It is more than
5 carats and is being sold for around $6,000.
MARIANA VAN ZELLER:
On the open market this diamond will later be re-sold for five or ten
times more.
MARIANA: [subtitles]
Is it easy to sell this diamond?
BUYER: [subtitles]
Easy. Diamonds are easy to sell. Easier to sell than cocaine.
MARIANA VAN ZELLER:
Around the Cinta Larga reservation,
black market diamonds have led to rising violence …
Here in the jungle, the federal
police were first called in a few years ago to investigate the murder
of two Indian leaders by miners…
MARIANA VAN ZELLER:
This time, it’s the Indians
who are accused of murder…a massacre of miners that shocked Brazil
just a few months before we arrived…
Chief Sposito was put in charge
of the investigation…he has become the government’s point man with
the Indians…
It was only in the 1960’s
that the Cinta Larga were first contacted by the Brazilian government…
White men are still not allowed
on the reserve without an invitation…
But we’ve negotiated our
way in with the federal police.
We’re surprised to find the
Cinta Larga in full warrior dress.
We’ve been told that the
Indians who participated in the massacre dressed like this at the time,
using bows and arrows, spears and guns, to kill the miners who they
said were taking diamonds off their reservation without permission…
Rumors have been spreading
that the Brazilian government is planning to seize the Cinta Larga’s
mine… so Police Chief Sposito addresses this right away…
SPOSITO: [subtitles]
First of all, I would like to explain something. For you to
wipe it from your minds once and for all. Nobody is going to take
you off the lands that you occupy. These lands belong to the Cinta
Larga.
MARIANA VAN ZELLER:
Chief Sposito walks a fine line with the Indians… they have the right
to live off the land, he says… but the diamonds that lie underground
are another matter…
SPOSITO: [subtitles]
“It might be the biggest diamond mine in the world. The government’s
idea is to regulate this mine.”
MARIANA VAN ZELLER:
In broken Portuguese, Chief Joao Bravo argues that the diamonds belong
to the Cinta Larga...
JOAO BRAVO, Chief, Cinta
Larga: [subtitles] “I’m in charge here. I have my rights
here. You have your rights somewhere else. The government
has its rights in the big city, in the capital. If we aren’t
able to mine, it will be bad for us.”
MARIANA VAN ZELLER:
Without money from diamonds, the Chief fears, his tribe won’t be able
to sustain itself…
JOAO BRAVO: [subtitles]
“Who’s going to bring things to the community, are you going to
bring food to us? You never did. Nobody comes here to bring
medicine. Nobody. For a long time, I strangled people. For
a long time I killed white men, but not today, not today. Today
we are all friendly. So you have to respect us.”
MARIANA VAN ZELLER:
After listening to the tribe’s grievances… the stand-off finally
ends with an agreement to shut down the mine temporarily… while the
government decides who controls the diamonds…
The deal is sealed with ceremonial
music…. The sharing of chicha, a traditional drink of fermented casava
root … and the slaughtering of a cow.
A few days later, we would
become the first outside film crew allowed into the diamond mine at
the center of the controversy…
Chief Joao Bravo agreed to
meet us here… with him is Carloa Cinta Larga.
Both have been indicted for
the massacre…
They tell us how the tribe
first got involved with diamonds…
CARLÃO: [subtitles]
“For a long time we were told there were diamonds here. But
we Indians didn’t believe it. But when we stopped selling wood,
we had no other option. We didn’t know.”
MARIANA: [subtitles]
“You didn’t know what diamonds were?”
CARLÃO: [subtitles]
“No, No.”
JOAO BRAVO: [subtitles]
“I didn’t even know what a diamond was. It was another chief, Pio,
who showed me first. I couldn’t believe how much they were worth.
Nobody could. They were so small, but worth so much.”
MARIANA VAN ZELLER:
The Indians were at first suspicious of the diamond miners who began
coming onto the reservation… but then they worked out a deal with
them…
CARLÃO: [subtitles]
“The word spread out and some 5,000 miners came in.
I remember that miners had to pay $5,000 to get in.”
MARIANA VAN ZELLER:
Some Cinta Larga learned to
mine diamonds themselves…. But mostly, it was outsiders who came…paying
the Indians for the right to mine here…
For years the arrangement worked…
and the government did little about it…
But then some of the miners
snuck upriver …. They cleared a new mine and began taking diamonds
without paying anything to the Cinta Larga…
When the Indians found out
about it, they threatened violence… but the miners kept coming….
Then, in April 2004, as hundreds
of miners worked in what they thought was a secret location …. The
Indians ambushed them….
The police later found the
bodies, most of them mutilated beyond recognition…
SPOSITO: [subtitles]
They were all lined up side by side. They died in a row, one after
the other.
MARIANA VAN ZELLER:
[subtitles] It was a massacre…
SPOSITO: [subtitles]
A vision from hell. Especially since we arrived at the scene
a week after it happened. So it was a really a disturbing scene.
MARIANA VAN ZELLER:
Finding a survivor of the massacre
willing to speak on camera was difficult. Many miners hope to
mine diamonds on the reservation again, and they fear retribution from
the Cinta Larga if they speak about what they saw.
Finally, I found a miner who
agreed to tell me his story if I did not reveal his identity.
The day of the massacre began
like any other, he said…until he heard gunfire.
UNIDENTIFIED MINER:
[subtitles] “POW!’ The 12-gauge went off. I said,
‘Holy Mary! Now that the Indians are here, it’s going to rain
bullets. I was jumping… trying to climb out of the hole.
I couldn’t, I kept on sliding back to the bottom and the shots kept
on coming.”
MARIANA VAN ZELLER:
This miner told me that as many as one hundred men may have died that
day…many more than the official body count of twenty-nine…
UNIDENTIFIED MINER:
[subtitles] “From where I was hiding, I could hear the screams.
Miners begging for the love of God not to be killed. Miners crying
and screaming, but nothing worked. They were all killed.”
MARIANA VAN ZELLER:
While twenty-two Cinta Larga have now been indicted in the massacre,
it is unlikely any of them will ever be convicted.
Under Brazil’s constitution,
Indians from isolated communities can be considered ignorant of the
country’s laws — even those against murder.
Many miners feel the government
is willing to let the Indians go free to quiet tensions around the diamond
mine…
Carlos Gonzales was headed
to the Cinta Larga reservation on the day of the massacre, but his car
broke down.
Friends of his killed by the
Indians are buried just a few miles away…
MARIANA:
[subtitles] Do you think the Indians knew what they
were doing was wrong?
GONZALES: [subtitles]
“If it was an Indian living naked in the jungle with no contact with
the white man, then OK. But, in this case, they lost their innocence
years ago. Once they dress like white men, use the things white
men use, imported cars, cell phones and satellite phone. They are no
longer children. For sure, they knew what they were doing.”
MARIANA
VAN ZELLER:
In town, miners wait anxiously
for the government to re-open the mine… and to punish the Indians…
In the immediate aftermath
of the massacre… the miners took matters into their own hands…
They captured this Cinta Larga
man, who they claimed participated in the killings. … The man was
beaten and tied to a tree in the town square, where a bystander shot
this video.
Local police prevented a lynching…
But not long after, a
14-year-old Cinta Larga boy was shot dead by miners in the street…
now, few Indians dare mix with the white population in town….
Until fairly recently, the
Cinta Larga lived essentially as they had since the stone age.
Then, in the 1960’s, as Brazil began to expand into the Amazon, the
government set them up on reservations….
The tribe numbered around 5,000
at the time, but today only 1,300 Cinta Larga remain. In just
a few years, diamonds have become their lifeblood…
This is Chief Pio… he was
reluctant to be interviewed…
But he agreed to speak to me
on the condition that I did not ask him about the massacre for which
he, too, has been indicted.
PIO, Chief, Cinta Larga:
[subtitles] So many things changed after we started living with
the white man’s culture.” “Money changed the life of the Cinta
Larga people. We want both cultures, we want to have cars, we
want to have those things that the white man brought here. We
weren’t the ones who went looking for those things. It was the
white man’s culture that came looking for us.
MARIANA VAN ZELLER:
Of Brazil’s roughly four hundred remaining Indian tribes, the Cinta
Larga may now be the most prosperous…
They say they’ll resist any
government plan to turn their diamond mine over to outsiders…
PIO: [subtitles]
“Today our people don’t want to hand it over to a mining company,
we would prefer that the government say, “you’re the ones who are
going to mine,” That’s what we want.”
MARIANA: [subtitles]
If this doesn’t happen do you think they will fight?
PIO: [subtitles]
“Yes, I believe so, there are some who say, ‘we’re not going to
hand it over, we’re going to fight for the government to hand it to
us.”
MARIANA VAN ZELLER:
Izanoel Sodré is a government anthropologist who was called in
to work with the Cinta Larga after the massacre…
He says that the Indians who
killed the miners were not murderers…. They were doing what they’ve
always done in warrior cultures…
IZANOEL SODRÉ, Anthropologist:
[subtitles] “I asked a Cinta Larga about the massacre,
and this is what he said, “If you pass close to a beehive, the bees
won’t do anything, but if you try to take something from inside it,
they will attack you.” The same happened to the Indians. They
were attacked and they defended themselves.
MARIANA: “But how
were they attacked?”
SODRÉ: “In the loss
of their territory, in the invasion of their territory.”
MARIANA VAN ZELLER:
Back at their camp in the jungle, the federal police continue to keep
miners from sneaking onto the reservation… and keep Indians from selling
their diamonds on the black market. Chief Pio has come here to
discuss the latest Brazilian government plan…
MARIANA VAN ZELLER:
In exchange for continuing
to keep the mine closed, Chief Sposito explains… the government
has granted the Cinta Larga a fifteen-day amnesty to sell what’s left
of their illegally mined diamonds to Caixa, Brazil’s federal bank.
Most of the Cinta Larga are
skeptical, but one man decides to sell a 28-carat diamond.
On the black market, it would bring him a few thousand dollars cash…
but he can make a lot more by selling it through the government…
A
few months later the diamond turned up here…
MARIANA VAN ZELLER:
…It was valued at $112,000 at this auction in Rio de Janiero for major
diamond buyers in Brazil and around the world…
The government called the diamond
buy-back program a success… but the big question has not been solved…who
should control what may be the biggest diamond mine in the world?
The international mining companies
are pushing hard for a change in the Brazilian Constitution that would
legalize mining…not just on the Cinta Larga reservation, but on all
of Brazil’s indigenous lands… it’s a move that could potentially
open up the whole of the Amazon to big industry…
Back on the reservation, the
Cinta Larga wait for the government’s decision about the future of
the mine…
MARIANA VAN ZELLER:
Chief Pio and the others indicted
may yet face trial for the massacre…
But the Indians and the miners
may soon find themselves on the same side… in a fight that could potentially
determine the future of the Amazon…
CHIEF SPOSITO: [subtitles]
This issue of the Indians and the miners is a war of the
miserable. They are just people who are trying to survive,
earning a little money to survive, while the cartels are taking advantage
of that war. So miners die, Indians die, while the ones benefiting
are those negotiating, speculating on the diamond market.
FRONTLINE/World’s
“Saddam’s Road to Hell” is available on videocassette or DVD,
to order call PBS Home Video at 1-800-PLAY-PBS
FRONTLINE/World is made possible by ABB, a global provider of power and automation technologies. We enable our utility and industry customers all over the world to find solutions in their quest to improve performance and lower environmental impact.
With additional funding from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation,
and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
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