Number 435, February 23, 2001.
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In this week's issue:
>NEWS BRIEFS
- Landless to continue their resistence in Mato Grosso do Sul
- Human Rights Committee hears reports of sexual abuse of Yanomami Women
- Conflicts over indigenous issues continue in state of Santa Catarina
- Unicef gives Brazil a 0.5 grade for its treatment of children
- Sao Paulo sees its biggest prison revolt in history
>LAND ISSUES
- Fireworks in the rural zone
NEWS BRIEFS
- Landless to continue their resistence in Mato Grosso do Sul
A group of 65 landless families have promised to continue their fight for possession of 10 hectares of land located in Mato Grosso do Sul despite a court decision ordering them off the land. Members of the group have staged various protests blocking three major highways in the region. The group is also demanding the release of two of their leaders, Antonio Rodrigues dos Santos and Ivete Luzia da Silva. The 65 families who have been in the area for three years have already planted beans, corn, and fruit on the land which has already been declared "non-productive" by the government (which by Brazilian law means that the land can be appropriated and redistributed). This week representatives will meet with the government of the state to discuss the situation.
Source: Linha Aberta
February 21, 2001
- Human Rights Committee hears reports of sexual abuse of Yanomami Women
Federal representative Marcos Rolim (Workers’ Party – state of Rio Grande do Sul), chairman of the Human Rights Committee of the Brazilian House of Representatives, was very disturbed with reports provided by Yanomami women about sexual abuse committed by Army soldiers. Rolim said that he could see how the military slowly seduce the indigenous women and then have sexual intercourse with them. He said he will draft a detailed report about his visit to the Yanomami area and will submit it to the Committee and to President Fernando Henrique Cardoso indicating, among other issues, how harmful it would be to set up military facilities close to the area. The Army has plans to deploy another border platoon inside the Yanomami area. It would be the fourth platoon to be deployed inside the same territory. Marcos Rolim was in the state of Roraima on February 8 and 9, where he attended a Tuxaua assembly in the Pium village, 50 km from Boa Vista, the capital, and visited a Yanomami village called Surucucu, in the east region of the state, where he had an opportunity to talk to Yanomami women.
Source: Cimi
February 15, 2001
- Conflicts over indigenous issues continue in state of Santa Catarina
The climate in Chapecó, state of Santa Catarina, is tense. Settlers in the locality of Sede Trentin prevented a Working Group (GT) set up by Funai from starting a survey of improvements made by invaders of the Toldo Chimbangue II indigenous area. The Kaingang reacted and blocked the road that leads to the locality, but they suspended the action one hour later in compliance with a preliminary order issued by a federal court. Never before had a court been so swift to issue a decision about an indigenous issue. Now an impasse has been reached. The settlers continue to deny any access to the area. The Kaingang got in touch with Public Prosecution Office to say that if the GT is not allowed to carry out its activities they will block the road for as long as it is necessary, enhancing the tension.
In another part of the state, the indigenous Xoklengs are under threat from local ranchers who are demanding that the government pay the ranchers for land that the indigenous are currently occupying. The ranchers are heavily armed and many families have already left the area fearing confrontations and violent conflicts.
Source: Cimi and Linha Aberta
February 15 and February 21
- Unicef gives Brazil a 0.5 grade for its treatment of children
Unicef (United Nation’s Fund for Children) recently released a report on the situation of children in Brazil. On a scale of 0 to 1, Brazil received a 0.5, placing it in the 85th position in the world. The report gave a wide range of scores among municipalities within the country: for example, Aguas de Sao Pedro, in the state of Sao Paulo, received a 0.831 ranking, while Marechal Thaumaturgo in the state of Acre received a 0.095. In the former, there is no significant incidence of child mortality and every child is vaccinated--the municipality placed children as an absolute priority; in the latter, only 8.9% of the children go to pre-school and only 1.67% have received measles vaccination. The majority of the best scores are in the South and Southeast of the country while the worst are in the North and Northeast.
Source: Sem Fronteiras
January-February, 2001
- Sao Paulo sees its biggest prison revolt in history
Last Sunday, 27,000 prisoners in 29 prisons in 21 cities of the state of Sao Paulo staged a simultaneous revolt which began at 12:00 p.m. and lasted for 27 hours. The revolt was carried out by a prison gang called PCC (First Command of the Capital) after the principal leaders of the gang were transferred out of Carandiru prison. The PCC, which has many members scattered throughout the prisons in the state, communicated with its members via cellular phones. The gang is involved in a number of activities ranging from drug trafficking, buying and renting cell space, charging members fees for protection from other inmates, and the planning and execution of escapes and rebellions. Officials sorely underestimated the power the PCC wields in the state and were totally taken by surprise. By the end of the revolt, 16 inmates were killed and 77 wounded. It is unclear at this point how many of the 16 were killed by other inmates and how many were killed by police. The director of the prison system, Nagashi Furukawa, announced that he is suspending family visits as a punishment to the prisoners. Some are critiquing this measure saying that it is only adding more tension.
Source: Folha de Sao Paulo
February 19 - 21, 2001
[Sejup received the following from Amnesty International responding to the prison riot:
* News Release Issued by the International Secretariat of Amnesty
International *
19 February 2001
AMR 15/007/2001
30/01
The response to the upheavals in prisons in the city of São Paulo
must be calm and measured and avoid any excessive use of force,
Amnesty International said today.
"To prevent the situation from further spiralling into
violence it is essential that human rights defenders, church
representatives and independent observers be allowed to accompany
any intervention by the authorities into the disrupted prisons."
Most of the visiting family members taken hostage
alongside prison guards in 29 prisons across the state of São
Paulo have now been freed. About 12 casualties were reported, at
least two of which as a result of police action.
"While the incidents may have been triggered by the
transfer of a number of gang leaders, the extent and scope of
these uprisings clearly point at much deeper problems within the
São Paulo prison system," Amnesty International stressed.
With a prison population of over 90,000, and including
one of the largest prisons in the whole region, the São Paulo
prison system has long been in a state of severe crisis. Amnesty
International has documented this crisis, detailing the extreme
overcrowding, deaths in custody, the systematic use of torture,
and lack of medical and sanitation facilities, further compounded
by the use of under-trained and under-paid prison staff, unable
to deal with high levels of gang warfare and regular riots.
Amnesty International recognises the efforts of Dr
Nagashi Furukawa, recently appointed State Secretary for Penal
Administration, to improve São Paulo's penitentiaries with a
progressive prisons building programme, backed with attempts to
solve the critical overcrowding in the police stations.
However these efforts clearly lack the necessary state
and federal support to tackle such a long-standing and severe
problem.
"The Brazilian government must replace its rhetoric with
proper political and financial support for reform of the penal
and judicial systems if it is to avoid future disasters like the
Carandiru prison massacre of 1992," Amnesty International said.
Background
The Carandiru massacre was one of the most horrific incidents
ever documented by Amnesty International in Brazil. Military
police stormed Latin America's largest prison, the Casa da
Detenção (popularly known as Carandiru) in São Paulo state on 2
October 1992 after a riot broke out. When they withdrew after an
11 hour killing spree, 111 inmates were left dead.
Nine years on, not a single policeman has been brought to
justice. The Brazilian authorities must confront the issue of
impunity as a key step to ending the killing and torture of
prisoners.
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LAND ISSUES
- Fireworks in the rural zone
By Frei Betto
Millions of Brazilians linked up via television this New Year with the two
million enjoying the fireworks on Rio de Janeiro’s shores. A pity that in
Copacobana aesthetics prevailed over ethics and public security, which
failed to merit the attention of either the fireworks manufacturers or
public authorities.
In Brasilia, the government of Fernando Henrique Cardoso put on another
pyrotechnic display in presenting the progress of their "agrarian reform",
from which they themselves emerged somewhat scalded; unless the humiliating
paradox of having distributed over a million basic food parcels to rural
families can really be considered a triumph.
In between the rockets it was announced that land distribution in Brazil had
improved on an historically unprecedented scale. According to the
government, the concentration of land ownership, as measured on the Gini
index* had declined in the last two years from 0,848 to 0,202, with Brazil
had dropping from 5th to 12th place in world rankings.
(*operating on the scale 0-1, where 1 indicates the best and 0 the worst
standards of land distribution)
The statistics gathered by INCRA however (National Institute of
Colonisation and Agrarian Reform) show a considerable increase in the
concentration of land ownership between 1992 and 1998. Looking at INCRA
findings for 1992-1998, the total area occupied by rural estates of over
2000 hectares increased by 56 million hectares; increasing by an area 3
times greater than the 18 million hectares which the government would
expropriate for transferral to the agrarian reform programme in 6 years.
According to studies done by Rodolfo Hoffman of the University of Campinas,
one of the people responsible for processing INCRA’s statistical
information, an increase occurred in the concentration of land ownership in
all Brazilian regions excepting the Central-East, whose Gini index remained
stable. The study calculated a percentage of the total area occupied by the
top 10% of large rural estates in the country, and reached the conclusion
that this area had grown from 77,1% to 78.6%, in the period 1992 -1998.
The government praises itself on having reduced levels of rural violence,
citing the figure of ten deaths in the past year. Yet the figures of the
CPT (Pastoral Land Commission) contradict official discourse. These show
that, comparing the average annual figures for rural conflicts for the
period 1992-1994 to those for 1995-1999, the average occurrence of rose from
367 to 667 cases per year; an increase of 82%. The number of people
concerned in these conflicts has increased from the annual average of
214,653 (1992-94), to that of 508,507 (1995-99); an alarming increase of
137%.
The number of assassinations declined by 5%, dropping from an average of 38
deaths annually pre-Cardoso, to an average of 36 during his office. Rural
violence, however, cannot be measured by the number of deaths alone. We
need only to read the newspapers to see cases of forced labour, exploitation
of indigenous and child labourers, beatings, death threats, pitiful salary
levels etc.
It is perhaps the government’s privatisation syndrome which has prevented it
from bragging about one of its achievements: the nationalisation of rural
violence. It created the "Rural DOPS" (Department of Public and Social
Order) within the Federal Police, and crimes previously committed by gunmen
and thugs are today the jurisdiction of repressive state forces, which,
assisted by judge accomplices of the large landed estates, promote unjust
evictions, threaten movement leaders, persecute, torture, invade encampments
and spread terror amongst children.
The fireworks over the Planalto enchant the skies but here on the earth the
year 2000 took first place in terms of the number of evictions, illegal
arrests, and illegitimate police and judicial trials. Among 14
assassinations in rural areas, no less than 11 were militants of the MST
(Movement of Landless Workers). During its 15 years of existence, with the
exception of the massacres which have taken place, the MST has never lost so
many militants through assassination in one year alone.
Speaking of end of year parties brings us to the presents which Cardoso’s
government gave to supporters of agrarian reform in Brazil in the year 2000:
the prohibition of official inspections of unproductive territories
occupied by landless families; the suspension of family credit to those
associated with the MST; the obligatory withdrawal of the CNBB (Brazilian
National Commission of Bishops) from mediating in dialogue with the
landless movement; the prevention of expropriation of large estates which
are registered with the programme for rural lease; and the request in
Congress for the urgent processing of draft legislative bills like Pl
3.242/00, which imposes more rigorous penal and administrative control of
the occupation of public spaces, with the aim of discouraging the encampment
of landless workers at major roadsides.
Finally , the government boasts of having placed 482,206 families since
1995. According to CPT and INCRA reports, the true figure does not succeed
237,299. In the same period, according to the IBGE (Brazilian Institute of
Geography and Statistics), 840 thousand families (around 4,2 million people)
abandoned the countryside for want of agricultural policies.
Brazil is thus entering into the new millenium with only one agricultural
reform to set down in its history: that is being divided into hereditary
provinces.
Frei Betto, 56, writer and evaluator of social and pastoral movements,
works for the Centre for Global Justice and is the co-author with Emir Sader
of "Controversies" (Boitempo), among other books.
Translation by Jennifer Alexander
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