Human rights activists are protesting the lack of state protection for Brazil's Yanomami people, as police investigate the alleged rape and death of a 12-year-old Indigenous girl.
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However, authorities are already casting doubt on the Yanomami's claims that illegal gold miners are responsible.
The police officer heading the investigation, Daniel Ramos, told reporters that interviews with community members of the village of Aracaca in the northern state of Roraima turned up contradictory information.
"The nature of the complaint does not match the concrete and real facts," Ramos said at a news conference in state capital Boa Vista.
The report of the girl's abduction, rape and death made last week by the Yanomami health council Condisi was followed by reports that the village was burned to the ground and its inhabitants had vanished.
Ramos said the Yanomami had moved to another village. Indigenous representatives said the villagers fled into the forest to get away from the gold miners after the girl died.
The Yanomami people live next to the border with Venezuela on Brazil's largest indigenous reservation that has been invaded by thousands of miners illegally prospecting for gold, causing pollution of rivers, shooting incidents and other abuses.
The mining boom has brought disease, violence and grave human rights violations on the Yanomami people, according to a recent study that blamed high gold prices and tacit government support.
The gold rush on protected Yanomami lands has increased under Brazil's far-right President Jair Bolsonaro who is backing legislation to allow commercial agriculture, mining and oil exploration on indigenous reservations.
The Federal Police said in a statement that during the investigation into the teenager's death, it destroyed nearby support infrastructure belonging to the gold miners, including the burning of 17,000 litres of fuel.
In Brasilia, human rights activists gathered outside the government's indigenous affairs agency Funai to protest the lack of state protection for the Yanomami people.
Brazil's main indigenous umbrella organisation APIB filed an injunction on Thursday before the Supreme Court seeking government action to protect the Yanomami from the gold miners.
Australian Associated Press
