Number 92. August 20, 1993

INDIGENOUS ISSUES

- IANOMAMI INDIANS MASSACRED IN RORAIMA

On August 18, the National Indian Foundation (FUNAI) denounced that at least nineteen Ianomami indians - ten children, seven women and two men - were murdered last Saturday or Sunday by gold miners in the village of Haximu, on the Ianomami reservation, near the border between Brazil and Venezuela. A FUNAI team which reached the site of the massacre on August 19 found the mutilated and decomposing bodies and said that the death toll could reach 40. FUNAI regional administrador Suami Santos said that "practically the whole village was destroyed." It is suspected that a group of miners, prospecting illegally on the reservation, are responsible for the crime. However, the commander of the Army base in Roraima, Colonel Burnier, said he believed it was due to a fight among the Ianomami themselves. He also said that the Ianomami reserve is a "threat to the integrity of the country."

The first news of the murders came from one of the Consolata Sisters working in the area, Sister Alessia, who managed to get a letter out by plane to FUNAI on Monday morning. Later one of the survivors of the massacre spoke by radio to the administrator of Funai, Suami Santos, in Boa Vista and told how the adult Ianomami had been killed by bullets, while the children had been decapitated with machetes. The president of FUNAI, Claudio Romeiro, said the massacre was carried out by the miners in reprisal for the so-called "Operation Free Forest", an effort to clear the miners out of the Ianomami reservation.

One of the survivors of the masacre, Roberto Carlos, told the "Folha de S.Paulo" that on Saturday or Sunday a group of miners who were extracting gold near Haximu invited four Ianomami to a meal of rice and sugar. During the meal, the miners shot and killed two Ianomami. The survivors ran toward the village. The miners chased them and shot the other Ianomami men. They killed and mutilated the women and children with knives, and set fire to the village dwellings.

Suami affirmed that FUNAI has proof that the killings were the work of gold miners. "We already have some names", he said. The "Folha de S.Paulo" reported that 15 miners were involved, and that they may have fled to Venezuela.

Justice Minister Mauricio Correa and Attorney General Aristedes Junqueira arrived in Roraima on the 19th to investigate the massacre. Junqueira called the killings "genocide", and criticized the federal government for failing to protect the constitutional rights of the indigenous by not demarcating indigenous lands. "Everyone complains about the demarcations by defending economic interests. It's time to put an end to this."

The massacre has been denounced widely by NGOs, politicians, anthropologists, church leaders, and the media in Brazil. Newspaper and television reports also emphasize the international protests against the killings.

The debate over demarcation of indigenous lands has intensified (see story below). The governor of Para, Jader Barbalho, said that he will seek a court ruling declaring the demarcation process unconstitutional. Roraima governor Ottomar de Sousa Pinto blamed the United States (whose satellites detected "valuable mineral deposits" in Roraima, and the "progressive clergy" for the conflicts in his state.

- Legislation introduced to obstruct demarcation on Brazil's borders.

The Catholic Church's Indigenous Missionary Council (CIMI) has called attention to a new piece of legislation introduced by Federal Deputy Nicias Ribeiro, from the state of Para, which would prohibit the demarcation of indigenous lands on the country's borders. This bill, if passed, would also require the prior approval by Congress of any demarcation outside the border area.

According to Ribeiro, the Executive Branch has been acting in

an "irresponsible" way, as it has been demarcating "excessively"

large indigenous areas. For this reason, Congress should take part in all decisions related to the size of indigenous lands. CIMI says that while "Ribeiro does not explain why he wants to prohibit the demarcation of Indian lands located on the border, his bill is in tune with the position of certain military officials who regard demarcation as a threat to national sovereignty. However, this is not true; Indian lands are assets of the Union and the demarcation only sets their limits. And because they are located on the border, it is up to the Union to defend them."

Requiring the prior approval of Congress will make the demarcation of Indian lands even more difficult, says CIMI. Demarcation comes under the power and responsibility of the Executive Branch. If the power to demarcate lands is handed over to Congress, demarcation would be heavily subject to political considerations. CIMI says that if the political criteria were to prevail over technical considerations, the rights of indigenous peoples will be harmed.

CIMI believes that when Deputy Ribeiro talks about "large "areas, he is referring to lands of the IANOMAMI. "Why should we give so much land to a handful of Indians when there are so many landless non-Indian Brazilians?", he asks. CIMI responds, "If he were really concerned with the landless, he would remember the need for land reform in Brazil. He would also have recalled that 0.8% of the Brazilian landowners control 48.58% of the country's surface area. But he did not forget to mention the mineral riches of the IANOMAMI lands, which mining companies covet. They would surely benefit from the approval of the bill."

CIMI recalls that this proposed legislation is not an isolated incident, but is part of a series of actions aimed at reducing the rights of indigenous peoples, particularly their rights to land in the constitutional revision, to begin in October.

- Courts oblige lumber company to compensate Indians in Mato Grosso

In a unprecedented decision, for Brazil, the Federal Court of Mato Grosso, on August 9th, Marco Antonio Bogaski, the owner of a logging company, to pay compensation to the Hahaintesu indigenous community for all the damages and loss caused by the illegal logging within the tribe's territory.

The decision was given by the judge, Maria Divina Vitoria, based on an action taken by the Nucleus for Indigenous Rights (NDI), on behalf of the Hahaintesu. The Indians belong to the Nambiquara group and live on the Vale do Guapore reserve, in the west of Mato Grosso. The area has 242,593 hectares and was demarcated in 1985.

Bogaski was ordered to pay US$ 20 thousand for the 132 mahogany trees he took from the reserve and pay the expenses of reforesting the area.

Last September, the attorney for Mato Grosso ordered Bogaski's arrest for endangering public safety in the Vale do Guarope reserve and since then the lumber man has been missing. Since Bogaski didn't contest the accusations, the court gave a verdict in favor of the NDI.

The indigenous community consider Bogaski to be one of the most assiduous invaders of their land. He had been caught cutting down trees, principally mahogany, several times, by the Federal Police, FUNAI (National Indian Foundation) and the environmental agency IBAMA. On one of these occasions, he threatened to kill the FUNAI agents and the Indians and fired shots at women and children.

The court process quotes Bogaski as saying, "The more FUNAI accuses me , the more wood I'll take out".

HUMAN RIGHTS

- Torture Never More Group in Rio denounce doctors who falsified death certificates during the military regime

The president of the Torture Never More group in Rio de Janeiro, Cecilia Coimbra, will give evidence next week to the Regional Medical Council for the State of Sao Paulo on the unethical and criminal activities of doctors who signed false death certificates for the Legal Medical Institute (IML). The certificates were signed to cover up the real causes of death of prisoners, murdered under torture, by agents of the political repression.

Groups comprising of the relatives of the political prisoners who disappeared during the military regime have given documented information on 66 such doctors, to the Medical Councils of Sao Paulo, Rio and Belo Horizonte and called for a thorough investigation.

In Sao Paulo, the Institute for Studies into State Violence (IEVE), an NGO of the relatives of the missing, collected 72 obituary documents from the IML, of which 25 were signed by Doctor Isaac Abramovich and 13 by Doctor Harry Shibata. Shibata was the doctor who signed the false death certificate of the journalist, Vladimir Herzog, who died under torture.

- CECA sees Candelaria massacre as "State Terrorism"

According to CECA, Santa Catarina, one of the most important NGOs in the south of Brazil, the massacre of the eight children in Rio de Janeiro, on July 23rd, was a manifestation of "State terrorism".

In a note entitled "Stop State Terrorism", CECA said: "Once again the arms furnished by the State to the police forces are used to murder street children. After the massacre in the Carandiru Prison and the constant homicides carried out by the police forces all over the country, eight children that were sleeping on the streets of Rio are shot down.

"The uncontrolled exploitation, hunger and poverty don't seem to shock the majority of the population anymore. They seem incapable of recognizing the country's tragic situation among all the sensationalist manipulation of a totally monopolized mass media. Child genocide has become part of the daily routine, like hunger and poverty, without anything concrete being done. The politicians play around cynically with the citizen's desire for security, investing more and more money in a police force, that seems more like an armed gang, protected with impunity.

"The constant crimes are not investigated, the State governments and the courts refuse to put an end to the state terrorism, disrespecting even the most elementary rules of a lawful state.

"It's up to the citizens to say NO. All of us, as individuals and as members of the social movements, have the power to end this situation. The population, if they take to the streets, can do what the institutions refuse to do and end this terrorism. Either we mobilize what's left of our capacity to be shocked or we will continue to be helpless witnesses to the extermination of Brazilians by hunger, poverty and violence".

- Judge postpones trial of those responsible for massacre in the 42nd police precinct

The trial of those responsible for the slaughter of 18 prisoners in a jail in Sao Paulo in 1989, which was to begin on August 16th, was postponed.

The barbarous crime took place in a tiny cell, on February 5th, 1989, in the 42nd Police District of the city of Sao Paulo. The prisoners died by suffocation. Three policemen are accused of the crime: the superintendent of the police station, police officer Carlos Eduardo Vasconcelos, detective Celso Jose da Cruz and the prison warden, Jose Ribeiro.

The lawyers for the accused police officers alleged they had only recently become aware of new evidence to be presented by the prosecution and asked for more time to study the documents in question. The prosecution, on the other hand, said that the lawyers had been informed of the documentation within the legal time limit and which "consisted of reports and TV tapes, that were common knowledge, especially to one of the lawyers who is seen giving an interview in one of the tapes".

Another excuse made by the lawyers for the defense was that one of them was "hoarse" and felt his client's case would suffer because of this. The judge accepted their request.

According to the accusation presented by the prosecution for the State, on February 5th, 1989, Sunday of Carnival, Cruz and Ribeiro, with the help of some military policemen, forced 50 naked prisoners into a tiny cell in the 42nd Police District, as a reprisal for an attempted escape bid, provoking the deaths of 18 of them. The other 32 only survived because they were taken out and given immediate assistance. The only airhole into the cell, which measured 1.45 by 3.75 metres, was blocked up by Ribeiro.

"As the minutes went by", said the prosecution, "the prisoners in the locked cell, began to feel the lack of air and started to cry out for help and bang on the door".

Carlos Vasconcelos, the officer in command, told of the attempted escape and the prisoners' confinement, did nothing and simply left the police station. Hearing the pleas of the prisoners in the other cells, Vasconcelos responded, "for those who were dead, we'll call the Legal Medical Institute, the rest we've just finished off".

When the cell was opened, an hour later, the horrible spectacle was seen, according to the accusation: "The nude bodies of the prisoners were up against the walls, piled on top of one another, covered in sweat, vomit, feces and urine, eyes stretched open in the fear of death. They no longer cried or beat on the metal door, which was finally opened".

The prosecution added that "the accused acted with abuse of authority in disrespecting the minimum limits of the rules of human solidarity and fraternity that should exist between the community. Although agents of public power, they acted worse than the most cold-blooded criminals that could ever have been put into their charge".

The accused are charged with 18 murders and 32 attempted murders and the trial is expected to last between three days and a week.

Pleas for postponement are common in trials of such importance, in order to try and diminish public interest and lessen the repercussions of the case. A new date was set for September 27.

Human rights groups in Brazil promise to keep a close watch on the trial and demand a stiff sentence for those responsible for this, the second biggest massacre in Brazilian prison history (the biggest being the Massacre of Carandiru, of October 2nd, 1992, in which 111 unarmed prisoners were executed by the elite troops of Sao Paulo's Military Police).

- Campaign to free Brazilian jailed in Chile

A campaign to free Brazilian Tania Maria Cordeiro Vaz, psychologist, 38 years old, is being promoted all over the country by the Landless Workers Movement, with the support of the National Movement for Human Rights and other NGOs.

Tania was arrested on April 6th, in the city of Rancagua, in the south of Chile, and was brutally tortured. She is accused of being a friend of an ex-political prisoner belonging to the left-wing political organization Lautaro. That is her crime !

Letters demanding her release and a full investigation into the torture can be sent to :

Presidente da Republica do Chile, dr. Patricio Alwlyn,

Palacio de la Moneda,

Santiago, Chile;

Embaixada do Chile no Brasil,

SES Avenida das Nacoes,

LT 11,

Cep 70407,

Brasilia, DF,

fax 061.225.5478.

Copies should be sent to:

FASIC, Manoel Rodriguez, 33,

Santiago, Chile

and the Arquidiocese de Santiago,

Plaza de Armas, 444,

Santiago, Chile.

- Minister for Justice requests Senate to give urgency to Bicudo/Bueno project on Military Courts

The Minister for Justice, Mauricio Correa, sent a message to the leader of the government in the Senate, Senator Pedro Simon (PMDB/RS), asking that the legislation proposed by Federal Deputies Helio Bicudo and Cunha Bueno, which would transfer common crimes committed by military policemen, from Military to Civilian jurisdiction,be given urgent attention.

At present, these crimes are heard by the military courts, and it is felt that the Military Courts, in such cases are not impartial.

The Minister also sent a message to the governor of Sao Paulo, Luiz Antonio Fleury Filho, requesting that he put the State Council for the Defense of Human Rights into effect, as passed by the State Legislature and as the law demands.

On September 1st, the Minister and his principal advisors will meet again with representatives from the non-governmental organizations who participated at the Human Rights Conference in Viena earlier this year.

The idea of the meeting is to continue the cooperation between the NGOs and the government to find common ground on human rights issues and evaluate the activities done by the four work-groups set up at the last meeting. The Ministry for Foreign Affairs and the Attorney General's Office is also taking part in this work.

The four work-groups are dealing with the questions of the way the penal code is carried out, crime statistics in Brazil, parallel powers (extermination groups and cover from the media) and the policy of the different Councils in Brazil, as well as crimes against human rights.

The Minister for Justice, who has been under a lot of political fire, sent a letter to the NGOs recently, thanking them for their support and pledging his continued commitment to the cause of human rights in Brazil.

POLITICAL NEWS

- President Itamar Franco to sanction bill on patents by the end of the year

Before the year is out, President Itamar Franco is expected to sanction the "Patent Law", already approved in the Chamber of Deputies and which is at present being discussed in the Senate.

The biggest foreign lobby in favor of the bill is the United States government, which is putting pressure on all the Latin American countries to adopt their system for legalizing patents.

According to the Workers Trade Union for the Chemical and Pharmaceutical Industries of Sao Paulo, if the project is approved as is, the principal ones who stand to gain are the multinationals and "joint-ventures" (Brazilian companies with foreign capital) in the chemical, pharmaceutical, food and alloyed-metal areas. Their products and bio-technical processes would be subject to patents, giving them the right to collect royalties and a monopoly of 15 years for products and 20 years for processes.

The losers, say the Union, will be the workers, with a certain fall in their wages and unemployment, provoked by the closing of many national companies. These companies, especially the smaller ones, will lose their markets to the multinationals. The laboratories and public research institutes belonging to the universities will also be severely hit, as their studies will become obsolete, since they will be tied up in patents.

Considering the fragility of the Brazil's national scientific and technological policies, the whole country will suffer, concludes the Union.

MEDIA NEWS

- CNBB promote seventh meeting of the Catholic Press

On August 12th, in Sao Paulo, the National Conference of Bishops of Brazil (CNBB) held the 7th National Meeting of the Catholic Press. Two of the items discussed, at the two - day meeting, were the creation of a Catholic Press Agency and the question of alternative experiences in the area of social communication.

The central theme on the first day was the National Association of the Catholic Press itself, complemented by a presentation made by the magazine "Sem Fronteiras", belonging to the Combonian Fathers and the "Jornal do Opiniao", from Belo Horizonte.

On the second day, alternative news agencies that are already functioning, including AGEN, talked about their experiences.

According to the meeting's coordinator, Rev. Fr. Augusto Cesar Pereira, "the Church will only be able to talk with and to people, if it has its own vehicles".

- Workers with Rede Globo hold first national congress in Rio

The workers with Globo TV, the richest television channel in Brazil and one of the four biggest in the world, owned by journalist, Roberto Marinho, are to hold their first ever national congress in Rio de Janeiro, at the end of the month. They will debate working conditions in the sector and discuss the situation of the media in Brazil.

Globo, which was set up with the help of the North-American group, Time-Life and which openly supported the military dictatorship in Brazil, and more recently Fernando Collor's corrupt government, controls 70% of all the publicity money spent on Brazilian television.

LAND ISSUES

- Groups call for investigation into murder of murdered rural leader

Grassroot movements and unions in Pernambuco are demanding that the authorities carry out a thorough investigation into the murder of the president of the Rural Workers Union of Belem de Maria, Pernambuco, Amancio Francisco Dias, 41 years old and father of 10 children.

Amancio was killed by two gunmen, on June 14th, at the door of his house. He was a prominent figure in the struggle for agrarian reform and the rights of the rural workers in the northeast of the country.

Not long before his death, Amancio had registered complaints with the local police station in Belem de Maria denouncing death threats he had been receiving. This year alone, seven rural workers have been murdered in the State of Pernambuco.

RELIGION

Boff speaks on global issues, spirituality.

Leonardo Boff, professor of Ethics and Philosophy of Religion at the State University of Rio de Janeiro, spoke recently at a conference in Dortmund, Germany, on Christianity and world issues of the 21st century. The newspaper, "O Estado de S.Paulo", published his speech on August 15. What follows is a summary of Boff's talk.

Boff began by saying that the world's problems are still of this century, and asked, "How can Christianity help us succeed in this century so that we may enter the 21st century with more hope?"

In order to respond to the crises in the world today, Boff cited the importance of taking "the perspective of integrity" -that which is elaborated from the South, where two-thirds of humanity are, from their allies who live in the countries of the North, and the minorities of the North."

Boff presented statistics which highlight the situation of poverty for more than 1 billion people, and the external debt of the poor countries - US$1.3 trillion in 1991. In the 1980s, Latin American countries transferred US$200 billion to the North in interest payments on the debt. "Who is helping whom? The poor are helping the rich. The rich countries don't need to invest in technically underdeveloped countries.

"The word 'development' has been replace by the "market", the integration of continental markets into the world market. The magic word today is 'modernization'. It's the new social utopia, and one gets there through 'neo-liberalism.'

"The market is presented as the great reality, a natural law, the only form of world production. One enters this market only through 'competition', which possesses a logic of exclusion. Countries in the South, technologically disadvantaged, without competition, with political crises due to poverty and misery, are no longer interesting. We are worth nothing, because we are outside the market. Whoever is out of the market does not exist.

"If so-called third world countries want to count, they must obey the logic of globalization. Globalization transforms everything into an immense 'Big Mac'. There are the same kinds of hotels, food, films, TV programs, all over the world. Even the Vatican has its 'Big Mac'- one catechism which is the same all over the world.

"The current world crisis is a radical one. In concrete terms, it is the crisis of the great dream and utopia that gave meaning to the world: the dream of unlimited development, and the will of power, manifested as domination over peoples and nature...the question now is: is it possible to maintain the logic of unlimited development and at the same time, avoid the disparaging of nature and the production of misery in the world?

"To overcome this crisis we need to elaborate a new dream and articulate a new meaning of life. We need a new spirituality.

"Capitalism created a culture of 'me without us". Socialism created a culture of 'us without me'. We need now a synthesis which allows a coming together of 'me with us". Neither individualism nor collectivism, but a participative social democracy. We need to make a self-correction in regards to the concept of the human being, to the integration of the feminine, and to the covenant with nature. From this, a new spirituality is born."

"In order to survive collectively, we need social democracy. Like a table, it is held up by four legs - participation, equality, respect for differences,and communion. These four legs, always together, make up the new dream of a communitarian, participative, and spiritual Humanity. This open democracy will have more possibility to integrate the feminine dimension in persons and cultures.

"Democracy cannot be only human and social. It must also be cosmic. What would society be without trees, without clean water, without pure air, without the shining stars? Human beings must integrate all these beings as new citizens. It must feel connected as brother and sister to all beings, from the most distant galaxies to the ant in the road. This cosmo-vision will open up the possibility for a new experience of the sacred and of the mystery which sustains the universe and which religions call God.

"Yes, we need revolutions in order to realize these needed transformations. But structural transformations are not enough. We need to transform collective and personal subjectivities.

"We believe in 'molecular revolutions'. Like molecules, which guarantee their life through relationship with other molecules and with the environment, the revolutions must begin in groups and communities interested in transformations. In the groups, persons, their practices, and their relationships with society are transformed. Starting there, we can begin to inundate wider spaces in society."

In looking at the role of Christianity in these transformations, Boff said that one must first recognize the part Christianity has played in the current crisis. "It reinforced, with historical practices, biblical texts, and other doctrines, the ideology of the human being as lord and dominator of creation." The way that Christianity is organized, "centralizing power in the hands of men, excluding women and marginalizing lay people" is also a part of the crisis.

Boff said, "If we do not make the question of the poor and miserable of this world the center of our Christian reflection and practice, we will not save Christianity from cynicism and we will ratify its historic irrelevance.

"The option for the poor and marginalized constitutes today the criterium of the universality and credibility of Christianity. The Churches must be more prophetic in this option. They should think less of their identity and their corporate interests and be more concerned with the common person and the crucified of history. By serving them, representing their cause before the formulators of policies, they will build their identity.

"We need to believe in the revolutionary force of the seed. The conversion of heart, the creation of a new planetary and in-solidarity consciousness, our molecular revolutions, the dream of a social and cosmic democracy are indicating the way of that which should be for all humanity."

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