Click to expand Image Survivors and relatives of those killed during the August 2020 operation remember the victims during a seminar at the Federal University of Amazonas in 2023. © 2023 Coletivo pelos Povos do Abacaxi A nightmare for Indigenous people and other communities on the Abacaxis riverbanks in the Brazilian Amazon began on August 3, 2020. That day, three private boats arrived in the town of Nova Olinda do Norte carrying ten undercover military police officers from the state of Amazonas; ten days earlier, someone had shot at a boat illegally fishing in the area. A senior state official, who was aboard, allegedly suffered a minor injury. Witnesses said he vowed to return in force.Things did not go as planned. A shootout erupted near one of the riverside communities, and two officers were killed. According to local residents, those who opened fire did not know the men on the boats were police officers. Amazonas state authorities offered a different account, claiming that a drug trafficking group had ambushed the police.In response, the state deployed 50 military police officers. Residents reported that, over the following weeks, officers moved from community to community, burning homes, torturing and killing at least six residents. Another two are still missing today and presumed dead. At the time, a federal prosecutor and Human Rights Watch warned that serious abuses were taking place, but state authorities and the federal police failed to stop them.Six years later, no one has been held accountable. Human Rights Watch sent a letter to United Nations rapporteurs and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on August 3, 2026, urging them to press Brazilian authorities to ensure justice and to protect victims and local activists. The letter includes the case of a community leader who said officers repeatedly beat him in front of the then-commander of the Amazonas Military Police. They also put a plastic bag over his head and threatened to cut his genitals with a knife, he recalled. Eventually, the officers released him with a warning: “If you talk, you’ll die.” And yet, he reported the torture to federal police.His courage, and that of other witnesses—including a father who recounted how officers placed his six-year-old child in a freezer—led federal prosecutors to file charges in 2024 and 2025 against the former secretary of public security of Amazonas and 12 police officers. Today, the cases remain stalled because of a legal dispute over which court has jurisdiction to conduct the trials. Meanwhile, survivors live in fear.