•  rio de janeiro
• Thursday, June 02, 2011
• Inter Press Service

Organisations of small farmers and human rights groups are disappointed with the measures announced by the Brazilian government to address the problem of violence in the Amazon jungle region, after four environmental activists were murdered in less than a week.

The administration of Dilma Rousseff of the left-wing Workers Party called on rural leaders and local authorities Tuesday to take part in discussions on the creation of a special 'crisis cabinet' and to help analyse the protection measures ordered for 125 activists facing death threats. The government also promised to step up efforts against deforestation in the rainforest and to earmark special funds for the task.

The latest string of murders began on Tuesday May 24, when a husband and wife team of activists, José Claudio Ribeiro da Silva and María do Espírito Santo, who spent years fighting illegal deforestation in the jungle, were killed in the Praialta-Piranheira nature reserve in the northern Amazon state of Pará.

Three days later, on Friday May 27, environmentalist Adelino Ramos was killed in the northwestern Amazon state of Rondonia. And on Saturday May 28, Erenildo Silveira dos Santos, who the police believe was a witness to the murders of the couple in Pará, was also killed.

Joao Pedro Stedile, one of the leaders of the Landless Rural Workers' Movement (MST) — the largest rural movement in Brazil - said the measures announced by the government were merely aimed at 'showing society that it is doing something.' But he said the creation of an inter-ministerial crisis cabinet 'won't solve anything.'

To truly resolve the problem, he said, it is necessary 'to break the economic power of the 'latifundistas' (large landholders)' and make it possible for the courts to bring to trial and punish those responsible for hundreds of unresolved murders of rural activists, who are mainly killed by gunmen hired by large landowners, ranchers and loggers to intimidate those involved in the struggle for forest conservation.

Only 91 trials have been held for a total of 1,580 cases of rural activists killed in the last 25 years, and just 21 of the masterminds behind the murders and 73 of the gunmen were convicted, according to the Catholic Land Pastoral (CPT), which tracks rural killings in Brazil.

Isolete Wichieniski, a CPT leader, told IPS that the only person who has actually served a sentence for ordering a killing was Vitalmiro Bastos de Moura, for the 2005 murder of U.S.-born nun and rainforest activist Dorothy Stang. The problem of rural violence has been aggravated in recent years by the growth of agribusiness and logging and mining activities, said Wichieniski.

In Pará, for example, 'logging companies that pressure communities trying to preserve their nature reserves have made a lot of headway,' he said. The production of soy for export and crops for making biodiesel has also grown. But he said the main cause of the violence is the impunity enjoyed by those who order and carry out the killings.

© Inter Press Service (2011) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service

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