NEWS FROM BRAZIL supplied by SEJUP (Servico Brasileiro de Justica e Paz).
Number 502, December 21, 2003

We would like to extend our best wishes to all of our readers during this
holiday season.  May 2004 bring us a more just, peaceful world!

The Sejup Staff

This week´s SEJUP focuses on the results of the 2003 Report  on Human
Rights in Brazil

The Poor and Socially Excluded are the Principle Victims of Growing
Violations of Fundamental Human Rights

By Tatiana Merlino

A disturbing picture emerges from a report that traces human rights
violations in Brazil during the first nine months of Lula's presidency.
Published by the Rede Social de Justiça e Direitos Humanos (Social
Network of Justice and Human Rights in conjunction with Global
Exchange), the 2003 report concluded that the poor and excluded are
the principal victims of the government's economic guidelines which
continue in the same directions as the programs implemented in the last
two decades.  That is, they prioritize speculative capital at the expense
of productive investments in response to International Monetary Fund (IMF)
demands.

The document, one of the few to report on human rights in Brazil since
2000, is the product of the work of twenty-five organizations, including
the Land Ministry Committee ( Comissão Pastoral da Terra or CPT), the
Movement of Landless Workers (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem
Terra, or MST), the Missionary Council for the Indigenous (Conselho
Indigenista Missionário, or Cimi), the Women's March and the Southern
Jubilee Campaign.

Maria Luisa Mendonça, one of the directors of the Social Network, said
that while there is no real change in economic direction, "which is what
those who voted for [President] Lula expected," the human rights
situation will not change. "Compensatory programs will not be sufficient
to solve the enormous challenges that exist with respect to human
rights," she says.

According to the economist Sandra Quintela, between January and August
of 2003, the expenditures for interest on the debt reached R$ 102.4
billion (about $34 billion), 68% more than the same period in the year
before.  These expenditures are the equivalent of three times the
federal government's budget for health, 334 times the budget for housing
and 10.2% of the gross domestic product, or about 30% of the
government's tax income, including all three levelsmunicipal, state
and federal.

Principle Conclusions of the Report

Indigenous:  The Indigenous Situation Data from the Missionary Council for the
Indigenous (Cimi) show that in 2003 the number of murders of indigenous
leaders exceeded the records for the last ten years.  There were 22
deaths between January and October.  The report criticizes the
government's lack of political will to ratify legally the indigenous
lands and to complete the process of determining their exact
boundaries --66.73% of the indigenous communities are still awaiting this
determination. Furthermore, the indigenous peoples' representatives are
waiting for the president to revoke the former president's decree that
permits the installation of military bases in their lands.

Crimes of Large Land Owners: These numbers also are reaching record
heights.  By November the CPT registered the assassination of 61 rural
workers.  Of these crimes, 35 occurred in the state of Pará [in Brazil's
northeast]. In 2001, the total number was 29 and in 2002, 43.  Impunity
is one of the principal problems of the violence.  Between 1985 and 2002,
there were 1,280 assassinations of rural workers.  Of this total, only
121 received sentences.  The criminalization of social movements, in
addition to other forms of repression like arbitrarily imprisoning rural
workers, especially in the Pontal do Paranapanema [western São Paulo
State] are also highlighted by the document.

Slavery:  By the middle of October, 7,623 enslaved workers had been
freed, principally in the states of Pará, Mato Grosso, Tocantins and
Maranhâo, according to the CPT. According to the UN's International
Labor Organization, there are about forty thousand slaves in Brazil. One
of the principle actions that President Lula took was a project for the
eradication of slave labor that includes the confiscation of land, the
increase in fines and the refusal of credit for violators.  However,
many of these measures have never been implemented.

Unemployment: In August of 2003, according to data of Dieese
(Departamento Intersindical de Estatística e Estudos Econômicos), the
rate of unemployment in São Paulo was 23.6% for women and 16.5% for men.
Since the beginning of the year, according to data of the NGO called
Sempre Viva Organização Feminina, nearly 300,000 women left the
workplace.

Housing: The Brazilian housing deficit is more than six million units.
In the city of São Paulo, the number of people who live in favelas
(shantytowns) grew from 1,200,000 in 1990 to nearly 2 million in 2000.
Data from the Metropolitan Research Center (Centro de Estudos da
Metrópole) reveal that every eight days the city acquires a new favela.
 From 1991 to 2000, 464 favelas were created and an average of 74 people
per day became occupants of a shantytown.

Education: The report shows that 42 million Brazilians older than ten,
31.4% of the population, are functional illiterates.  According to
Sérgio Haddad, Executive Secretary of Ação Educativa (Action Education),
nearly 50 million people older than 14-nearly 34% of the population in
this age-group failed to complete the fourth grade.

Urban Violence: In urban centers the low-income communities suffer from
police violence and from extermination groups.  Between January and May,
2003, the Military Police [as opposed, for example, to the investigative
police who also maintain the jails] killed 435 people-an average of
almost 3 killings per day.  These data reveal an increase of 51% in
relation to the same period the year before.



HUMAN RIGHTS PRIZE WINNER IS STILL PERSECUTED

In Brazil he has already received the National Human Rights Prize.
In August, the Council of Order of Labor Judges conferred on him the
title of "Commander." In France, he was distinguished in 1995 with the
title of the Legion of Honor, the highest honor of that country. In 2000
and 2001 he was considered for the Anti-Slavery prize, considered the
alternative Nobel Peace prize.  Nevertheless, public recognition in the
human rights scene does not prevent assassination threats against the
Dominican Brother Henry des Roziers in the south of Pará state.

Member of the coordinating council of the Land Ministry Committee (CPT)
of Pará, lawyer Henry des Roziers lives in Xinguara, where he
confronts the strong opposition of the politicians and large land
owners. For at least ten years he has been on the principle hit lists of
those destined to be killed, where the names of João Canuto and Expedito
Ribeiro (presidents of the Rural Workers Union of Rio Maria) also were
until their respective assassinations in 1985 and 1991.

In 2001, the lawyer succeeded in obtaining an unprecedented victory in
Brazilian courts:  the condemnation of a landowner who ordered the
assassination of a union leader.  Jerônimo Alves do Amorim was condemned
to nineteen and a half years of prison for the death of Expedito
Ribeiro.  Amorim escaped from prison and Brother Henry continues to
suffer from defamation and threat campaigns.

Nowadays, in addition to defending union activists, Brother Henry works
for the exposure of slave labor in the south of Pará.  Seventy-three
years old, he accompanies the work of inspection of the Mobile Group, a
section of the Ministry of Labor.

The Ministry calculates that more than 70% of the cases of slave labor
in Brazil take place in Pará.  Of the 1,695 slaves encountered in the
first six months of this year, 1,193 were freed from farms in that
state.

At the beginning of the year, Brother Henry sent to the office of the
Ministério Público Federal [roughly, the federal attorney general] a
list with the names of 48 projects of farmers and cattle raisers that
have slave labor. The major part of the listed farms receives funds from
the Amazonian Investment Fund (Finam).  The list includes major ranchers
such as Roque Quagliato, who also owns sugar and alcohol mills in
Ourinhos, in the state of São Paulo, as well as six farms in the south
of Pará.

The most well-known member of his family, Roque received Queen Silvia
of Sweden at his large farm in Bannach.  He is an old customer of
Sudam [a federal program to encourage economic growth in the
impoverished Amazonian region], from which he received millions of reais
[plural of "real," worth today about 1/3 of a dollar, but was almost
equal to the dollar as recently as 1998] in recent decades to create
farming and cattle raising projects in tropical forest areas.

Brother Henry´s exposures of the farmers´corruption increased the
defamation campaigns against him.  Brother Henry was accused of inciting
violence in 2002 because of a demonstration by teachers on strike in
Rio Maria.   A year before, he received dozens of death threats and was
the object of a worldwide solidarity campaign promoted by Amnesty
International, which brought in 5,000 Christmas cards from all over the
world.

SOURCE: BRAZIL DE FATO, DEC. 3-10, 2003

The reproduction of this material is permitted as long as the source is
cited.