Muslim missionaries accused of trafficking Amazon Indigenous boys to Turkey
Excerpt:
SÃO PAULO (RNS) — A group of Turkish Muslims has been accused of human trafficking after allegedly persuading poor Indigenous families in Brazil’s Amazon region to let their boys learn Turkish and Arabic and how to study the Quran before sending them to Turkey.
The young Amazonians were allegedly subjected to severe discipline and given new names and forbidden to use their own, the police reported. Their families were convinced that the chance to study at universities abroad would improve their lives and didn’t suspect that their children would be badly treated.
When the police intervened, 15 boys were living with the group.
While the case has caused outrage, Muslims have criticized the media’s rapt coverage as Islamophobic, given that the Turkish group’s alleged operation was not so different from what many Christian churches have been doing for decades, some analysts said.
One of the first people to raise an alarm was Catholic Bishop Edson Damian of São Gabriel da Cachoeira. The city, located near the border with Colombia and Venezuela, is mostly populated by Indigenous people such as the Baniwa and the Tukano.
“I once visited the family of a seminarian. His aunt told me that boys and teenagers of the region were studying in Turkey. I saw the pictures of the Indigenous boys, dressed as if they were Turkish,” he recalled.
Damian brought his concerns to the federal police, he said, but nothing was done. He then contacted Sister Roselei Bertoldo, a longtime human rights activist and member of the Um Grito pela Vida (“A Cry for Life”), a network of Catholic nuns who work to prevent human trafficking.
“The question was first taken to the police in 2019. Last year, we reported the situation again. Only in 2023 did the federal police assume the case,” Bertoldo told Religion News Service.
The boys were all residents of the Taracuá community in São Gabriel da Cachoeira. Most of them are part of the Tukano people. Some were only 8 years old, she said….
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