![President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva: ‘We cannot lose a war to illegal miners, we cannot lose a war to illegal loggers [and] we cannot lose a war to people who are breaking the law.’](https://media.guim.co.uk/ef842262c3fbc092691278afd96c2d8c96e6b3d0/0_183_5500_3302/1000.jpg)
The Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has insisted his government must not lose the “war” against the environmental criminals devastating Indigenous lands in the Amazon after claims that thousands of illegal miners were resisting eviction from the country’s biggest such territory.
After taking power last January, Lula made expelling an estimated 20,000 gold and tin ore prospectors from the Yanomami Indigenous territory a top priority after four years of Amazon destruction under his far-right predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro. Environmental special forces and federal police teams were sent deep into the region’s remote jungles as part of a supposedly historic crackdown.
