BRAZIL-RIGHTS: Massive Demonstrations Commemorate Massacre

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Apr 17 1998 (IPS) - Tens of thousands of people demonstrated both within Brazil and abroad Monday, commemorating the massacre of 19 members of the Landless Movement (MST) two years ago, and to designate April 17 as the day of the rural workers.

The marches, public events, vigils and religious ceremonies were organised by the Landless Movement (MST), which leads the campaigns lobbying the government for faster, more widespread land reform in the country.

The Single Workers Union, the main Brazilian union centre, bodies within the Catholic Church, students and social movements swelled protests against violence in the rural areas and the reigning impunity of the offenders.

On April 17, 1996, military police opened fire on MST demonstrators, killing 19 and injuring a further 70 in Eldorado de Carajas, in the north of the country.

In Brasilia and Rio de Janeiro, campaigners carrying 19 coffins led the march through the streets and the demonstrations outside government and judicial headquarters.

In the Brazilian capital, an extra three crosses were added, for the two MST leaders murdered three weeks ago in the same region of Carajas, and an indigenous woman burned alive by adolescents in Brasilia last year.

The Comision Pastoral de la Tierra (Pastoral Commission of the Earth), linked to the Catholic church, said since 1985 there have been 1,003 victims of violence in rural parts of Brazil, including union representatives and members, rural workers, their lawyers and priests.

In so many cases, only 16 of the murderers have come to trial, and been sentenced.

In Sao Paulo, the demonstrators protested outside the Stock Exchange, indicating the financial sector as the root of many of the nation’s problems.

This year’s budget fro agrarian reform was a mere 2 billion dollars, while the government is spending 60 billion in interest payments on its debt, said Gilmar Mauro, one of the MST national co-ordinators.

The MST leadership, carried out by dozens of co-ordinators spread all over the country, hoped at least 100,000 demonstrators would hit the streets in the 23 of the 27 Brazilian states where the movement is organised.

Demonstrations for agrarian reform and against the impunity of the murderers also took place in 50 other countries, ending at the Brazilian embassies there, said the MST.

April 17 took on international dimensions last year when a congress held in Mexico adopted the day as the day of the rural workers’ struggle worldwide. Via Campesina, a Central American organisation, is in charge of organising these demonstrations.

In Brasilia, a commision of the MST presented the presidential office with a package of 50,000 cards signed by Canadians, calling for punishment of the 155 police officers guilty for the massacre in Eldorado de Carajas.

The signitures were collected by the Catholic organisation Desarrollo y Paz (Development and Peace), which will repeat the campaign in the next two years.

Demonstrations were even more tense in the state of Para. In Eldorado de Carajas itself, where the massacre occurred, an ecumenical religious service attended by the landless rural workers of the area paid homage to 19 killed here in 1996, and the two last month.

The army moved into the region some weeks back deploying 500 troops in order to avoid renewed violence. Nealy a thousand rural workers marched from Eldorado de Carajas to the state capital, Belem, a distance of some 700 kilometers, to demonstrate on Friday.

Marches of hundreds of rural workers also crossed three states in the northeast in the last two weeks, to join the 5,000 people protesting in Recife, capital of Pernambuco state.

The target here was the Superintendency of the Development of the Northeast, the official development body, where the demonstrators presented a document calling for an acceleration of the rural settlement programme and more resources for rural workers.

In Sao Paulo, there were confrontations with the police when the demonstrators collected outside the Stock Exchange. In some cities, like Porto Alegre, in the south, the MST decided to establish camps outside the government headquarters to prolong the demonstrations.