For sale on Facebook: Brazil’s Amazon
rainforest.
A groundbreaking BBC investigation
has just revealed that plots of Amazon rainforest --
including national forests and land reserved for indigenous peoples
-- is being sold illegally
via Facebook’s classified ads service, Marketplace.
And Facebook
doesn’t seem to want to do much about it.
Fuelled by the cattle ranching industry, and in the knowledge that remote locations
won’t be inspected by the authorities, ‘investors’
are clearing forest ready for farming and selling it
off.
Facebook, once again, is hiding
behind its usual excuse that it ‘requires buyers and sellers to
comply with laws and regulations’. But really, does
it expect land invaders willing to steal land from indigenous
communities to care about its toothless policy?
Facebook:
stop land invaders from selling stolen land on
Marketplace!
Indigenous communities like the
Uru Eu Wau Wau people rely on the land to hunt, fish
and collect fruits.
But with deforestation in the
Brazilian Amazon at a 10-year high, continued land grabs are
described by community leader Bitaté Uru Eu Wau Wau
as an attempt ‘to deforest our
lives’.
To make matters worse, those
involved in the illegal land market do so expecting
the Bolsonaro government will declare an amnesty on the stolen land. Once they’ve deforested
it they plead with politicians to abolish its
protected status, on the basis it no longer serves its original
purpose. Then they can legalise their claims.
And Facebook
Marketplace has become their go-to site to sell plots up to the size
of 1,000 football pitches.
Facebook:
stop land crimes from being committed on your
platform.
Tell Facebook it can’t look away
while land invaders profit from their crimes on its
platform.
