NEWS FROM
BRAZIL
supplied by Brazil Justice Net
Number 625, February 23, 2010
Visit our home page at: http://www.braziljusticenet.org
In this week's News from Brazil:
Five Years without Sr. Dorothy Stang
February
12th for many means the Day of Impunity: it was exactly on this date
five years ago that missionary sister Dorothy Stang, at 75 years old,
died after six bullets from an assassin’s gun. It was a barbarous
crime that got the country and the world’s attention. The
assassination occurred at 7 a.m. in the municipality of Anapu, in the
southeastern part of the state of Para. It was planned by two ranchers
whose economic interests were being threatened by the work of the
sister who defended poor agricultural workers, working on their behalf
for agrarian reform and sustainable production projects. The two
ranchers, Vitalmiro Bastos de Moura, known as Bida, and Regivaldo
Pereira Galvao, known as Taradao, have yet to be conclusively condemned
by the justice system.
“Dorothy’s work was very connected to the
most needy people. She devoted her life to them, made a preferential
option for the most poor, lived with these families, and began to
organize these communities and associations as well. She often walked
from community to community defending the interests of these people,”
said Dom Erwin, bishop of Prelazia, Xingu, who worked with the
missioner.
For Jane Silva, the coordinator of the Pastoral Land
Commission (CPT) in Para, the date of Sr. Dorothy’s death is important
in that it is a chance to remember the work the missioner pursued,
following her vision of people and forests living in harmony. “She
showed that it is possible to manage food production in a way that
protects the forest. She showed it was possible if public policies
were enacted.”
According to Dom Erwin, who has also received
death threats since 2006 and has had to have police escort, Dorothy
worked against the ambitions of large ranchers and land grabbers by
settling poor families into Sustainable Development Projects (PDS), a
new settlement model based on small family farming and subsistent
extraction projects with low environmental impact. “With this type of
settlement, begun by the government itself, she countered the interests
of large landowners who wanted to increase their pastures,” said Dom
Erwin. For the bishop, the most important thing about this five year
anniversary date is to remember that the sister’s death is symbolic--it
calls attention to her work in favor of those less favored and for the
conservation of the Amazon, which is becoming more and more
devastated. “A few days before her death, she said that in spite of
being threatened, she knew her place was alongside these people who are
constantly mistreated. So, she could not run away.”
Making the guilty responsible
In
the same year that the crime was committed, Rayfran das Neves Sales
confessed to be the one who actually shot Sr. Dorothy, and was given a
27-year prison sentence. The sentence was upheld on December 10, 2009
in the Criminal Forum of Belem after a request for a new trial was
denied. Two other accomplices of the crime, Amair Feijole da Cunha
and Clodoaldo Carlos Batista, are serving 18 and 17 years,
respectively. In 2007, one of the ranchers and architects of the
crime, Bida, received a 30-year prison sentence. However, in a new
trial held in 2008, he was found innocent. The public prosecutor
appealed the decision. The Para justice system then annulled the
absolution of the rancher and ordered his imprisonment. The Brazil
Supreme Court denied Bida habeas corpus in February 4, 2010, and he
finally turned himself in and awaits a new trial, to be held on March
31, 2010.
The other architect of the crime, Taradao, has yet to
be tried. He continues to walk freely, though he was imprisoned in
December of 2008 for another motive: he tried to falsify land
documents of the area which was in dispute during Sr. Dorothy’s time.
According to the federal police, Taradao fraudulently tried to acquire
Lot 55, which occupies 3,000 hectares of the PDS for which Sr. Dorothy
was fighting. The rancher was in prison for less than two months. His
trial is expected to happen sometime in the first half of this year.
Crimes and impunity in rural areas
Despite
the commotion around Sr. Dorothy’s assassination, Dom Erwin said that
this is not the only crime of this type, and there are other similar
cases which have never been covered by the press. “A few years ago, a
father of a family named Ademir died for the same reason. In the early
morning, they entered his house and killed him, in front of his wife.
But the case never received the same attention as Dorothy’s case. And
there have been other cases in the last few years.”
Jane Silva
of the CPT stated that today the Public Defender’s Office has
recognized the existence of 72 death threats in the state. Last week,
the CPT entered a list of 681 deaths related to land conflict between
1982 and 2008.
Dorothy, a life of action
Sr.
Dorothy Stang was born on June 7, 1931, in Dayton, Ohio, USA, and as a
religious sister was sent by her congregation (Sisters of Notre Dame de
Namur) in 1966 to work in Maranho, Brazil. From the beginning, she
worked with agricultural laborers from small Christian base
communities. Sr. Dorothy accompanied many of such communities in
Para. There was lack of land for family farmers to plant and there
were workers fleeing from submission to large land owners.
In
1982, Sr. Dorothy sought out Bishop Dom Erwin to talk about her desire
to work among the poor of the Amazon. “I was already a bishop at that
time, and she introduced herself as a representative of her
congregation, and told me she wanted to work among the poorest. So I
said to her, go to Transamazonia East, what is now Anapu. She stayed
there until the end of her life,” said Dom Erwin.
It was in
the poorest and the most needy areas of the Amazon (through which
passes the Transamazonian Highway) that Sr. Dorothy worked and
struggled against the interests of land grabbers and large ranchers.
Since the 1980’s, the region of the small city of Anapu has suffered
greatly from deforestation. This has caused constant conflict among
land grabbers, woodcutters, small producers and settlers. Sr. Dorothy
denounced the situation various times to the Brazilian authorities..
In
June of 2004, the missioner participated in a inquiry commission on
violence in rural areas and denounced the impunity that had aggravated
the situation of land conflicts in Para. She said that the land
grabbers did not respect boundaries of land destined for agrarian
reform. The head of the commission later asked for the creation of a
task force which allowed the Public Ministry and the Federal Police to
act in Para.
The main vision of Sr. Dorothy, indicated by
her work for sustainable development, was that rural workers should
have the right to a piece of land for planting, respecting the
environment. “This generated a very hostile environment. The large
land owners did not want this sister. In the middle of it all, I had
to defend her. Even the Legislative House of Anapu declared her to be
a person non grata, and there was a wave of lies. I was on the radio
and television many times saying that none of these lies were true,”
said Dom Erwin.
Shortly after lands were destined for a PDS,
the land grabbers took control of the lands. They alleged that the
lands already had owners, and began threatening many families, scaring
them off the land.
Sr. Dorothy’s work for small farmers
increased the ire of the ranchers. For this reason, her life was cut
short with six shots at blank range as she was going to a meeting of
rural workers in the countryside of Anapu. “The murderers wanted to
commit the act the night before, while she was sleeping in one of those
poor houses. But they were scared away when a child began to cry, and
left the deed for the next day,” said Dom Erwin.
The Dorothy Committee
After
the assassination, the Dorothy Committee
(www.comitedorothy.blogspot.com) was formed n Anapu. The group’s
objective is to construct a culture of peace through the commitment of
men and women and the Defense of Human Rights and Justice office to
socio-environmental causes, thus furthering the work of Sr. Dorothy.
The committee is formed by religious people, human rights activists,
and young people who are indignant with the impunity around these rural
crimes, and who believe in the possibility of doing something for the
common good and for the rights of excluded people of the Amazon. This
is the legacy of Sr. Dorothy.
Source: Comissao Pastoral da Terra, Secretaria Nacional, February 12, 2010
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