|
Amnesty International condemned the killing of 74-year-old Sister Dorothy Stang, on February 12, in Anapu, in the Brazilian Amazon. Sister Dorothy was shot several times as she walked to attend a meeting.
Sister Dorothy, a nun and native of Ohio in the US, worked as a human rights and environmental activist in the Amazon for over thirty years and had been subject to constant death threats as a result of her work.
This is the latest of hundreds of killings of trade unionists, environmentalists and land activists in the Brazilian state of Pará that Amnesty International has documented over decades.
The violence has been exacerbated by the long-term neglect shown by state and federal authorities to fighting impunity and protecting human rights defenders at risk.
Amnesty International is calling on federal and state authorities to ensure a permanent end to the violence and fear suffered by so many in the state.
Federal authorities recently promised to address the vulnerability of human rights defenders in the area, and it is vital that these promises are backed up with swift action.
These measures must include steps to disarm and disband all illicit armed militia, judicial and police reforms to ensure an effective response to such violence, and immediate measures to protect human rights defenders and land activists from death threats.
Amnesty International has long denounced both the violence in the state of Pará and failure by the authorities to address it. Illegal loggers and miners as well as large landowners have increasingly resorted to hiring gunmen and creating illicit armed militia to protect their economic interests.
Those fighting for the defence of human rights, land rights, labor rights or environmental protection have consistently been subject to threats, attacks and killings as a result.
The violence has been sustained by a painfully slow judicial system which perpetuates a state of impunity. Last year the Catholic Pastoral Land Commission (CPT) stated that only five people were in prison for the 976 killings which took place nationally between 1985 and 1996.
In the state of Pará cases such as Eldorado dos Carajás, where 19 land activists were killed by members of the military police, still languish in the courts nine years after the massacre took place.
Amnesty International
www.amnesty.org
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
Brazil received a huge boost in its international image with its selection as the host of the 2016 Olympics, but it was really just the cherry on top of the overall recognition of the country's ascension to the ranks of one of the world's most important countries. Now, as it finally takes its place on the world scene, there has been a great deal of concern about what kind of image Brazil hopes to project, now that the world is really paying attention. 
The only good thing to say about the visit to Brazil of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, on Monday November 23, is that it was mercifully short and lasted less than 24 hours. Ahmadinejad had his picture taken being hugged by president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva who gave him a warm welcome and said Iran had every right to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. 
The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. The Northeast of Brazil has historically been a place of encounter and mixing between peoples. For millenia groups of indigenous people fished, farmed, migrated and sometimes fought along this large, fertile area. 
The Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy. 
On July 4, 2006, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Caracas to sign the protocol for the entrance of Venezuela into the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). After two and a half years, the protocol was approved by the legislative bodies of Argentina and Uruguay, and as of now it may be only days away from being ratified by the continent's economic megalith, Brazil. 
Some sectors of the fight against AIDS have suggested that Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, committed genocide through his absence from the fight against the illness in his country throughout his two terms. 
One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in São Paulo and other metropolis. 
On November 7, 2009 a few friends and I had an opportunity to take a look inside a Brazilian jail outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. We were able to take some amateur footage of our experience on video (see link below). It's no surprise, of course, that the typical Brazilian jail lacks some of the functionality of those in North America or Europe, but our experience that day was quite shocking. 
Depletion of the Amazon Rainforest is not a new concern facing environmentalists, biologists, ecologists, and a growing number of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. For decades they have feared for the fate of the world's most biologically diverse and species-rich hothouse. 
Geisy Arruda made history this week in Brazil, but for all the wrong reasons. What began as a poorly planned fashion statement has become a worldwide tale. Geisy decided to wear a pink mini-dress to her private college in São Paulo state, and after that, all hell broke loose.