RIGHTS-BRAZIL: Activists Disappointed by Sentences in Massacre

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, May 23 2002 (IPS) - Although courts in Brazil convicted two military police commanders who led fierce repression of a protest in which 19 landless peasants were killed in 1996, neither the social movement to which the victims belonged nor human rights advocates are satisfied with the outcome of the trial.

Colonel Mario Pantoja and Major José María Oliveira were found to be responsible for the Apr 17, 1996 killing of 19 landless workers who were taking part in a blockade on a rural highway in Eldorado de Carajás, a municipality in the Amazonian state of Pará.

The peasants, who belonged to the Movimento dos Sem Terra (MST), or Landless Peasant Movement, were protesting to draw attention to their demand for the right to settle on idle farmland nearby.

The bloody incident was filmed by a local television crew, and the images shook Brazil and the world.

Pantoja, who was convicted last week, was sentenced to 228 years in prison, based on 12 years for each murder. Oliveira, whose trial ended late Wednesday, received 158 years and four months. Both were tried in Belém, the capital of Pará, in northern Brazil.

However, the sentences will automatically be reduced, in practice, to 30 years, the maximum prison term in Brazil.

And since the two officers are first-time offenders, they can appeal the verdict, thus putting off their imprisonment for at least three more years, until a final decision is handed down, Charles Trocate, MST coordinator in Pará, told IPS.

Moreover, if the two officers do end up going to prison, there are certain legal loopholes that would allow their release after just 10 years, said the activist.

He added that unfortunately, the “real culprits, who ordered the troops to open fire on the march by landless protesters – the governor of Pará, Almir Gabriel, and the general commander of the military police at the time, Colonel Fabiano Lopes – will not be brought to trial.”

However, Marcelo Freitas, assistant to the public prosecutor in the trial, representing the Para Society for Defence of Human Rights, said the sentences were “a satisfactory result, and will help put an end to the tradition of impunity” surrounding violence against peasant farmers in Pará.

Land is concentrated in just a few hands in Brazil. Forty-four percent of all arable land in this country of 162 million is owned by just one percent of farmers, while millions of peasants have no land and are forced to migrate to the slums surrounding the big cities or roam around looking for low-paid seasonal work.

As the government’s land reform programme has slowly distributed public land and expropriated privately owned uncultivated farmland to landless farmers, large, powerful landholders have organised to block the agrarian reform efforts, often forming their own private militias.

Hundreds of peasant farmers have been murdered in land disputes in Brazil, and virtually no one is ever prosecuted.

In the case of the Eldorado massacre, busloads of heavily armed military police were brought in to crack down on the roadblock.

Although Freitas was pleased with the convictions of Pantoja and Oliveira, he and the public prosecutor’s office criticised the acquittal of Captain Raimundo Lameira, who was tried along with Pantoja, and will demand a retrial for the officer.

The jury accepted the argument that Lameira was merely carrying out orders issued by Pantoja.

Freitas and the office of the public prosecutor will also demand that Pantoja be immediately imprisoned, on the argument that he cannot be left at large while the verdict is appealed, after being convicted on multiple counts of first-degree murder.

Within the next few weeks, 15 non-commissioned officers and sergeants will be brought to trial in connection with the massacre, as well as 120 rank-and-file military police.

But the MST fears that all of the non-commissioned officers and troops will be absolved on the argument that they were following orders.

The MST, known around the world for its highly organised occupations of uncultivated private and public land, aimed at forcing the pace of the government’s agrarian reform programme, refused to take part in the trials, arguing that they were marred by too many irregularities, which resulted from the pressure of local authorities and landowners.

The MST and other social organisations are fighting for cases involving murders of peasant farmers to be transferred to the federal courts in Brasilia, in order to neutralise the influence of local authorities and powerful landed elites.

The case of Eldorado de Carajás was initially handled by Judge Eva do Amaral Coelho, who made no attempt to conceal “her antipathy towards the MST and sympathy for the police,” said Trocate.

But her withdrawal from the case in response to the complaints did not solve the problem, because the trial simply continued in the same conditions and with the same evidence, under a new judge.

The conviction of the officers six years after the massacre was a result of international pressure from the United Nations, the Organisation of American States, and international human rights watchdogs, not a consequence of the justice system’s willingness to bring the culprits to justice, said Trocate.

Nevertheless, “any punishment is positive, because we know how difficult it is to convict police officers,” especially in Pará, despite the fact that there is “clear proof that a massacre took place,” James Cavallaro, coordinator of the Centre for Global Justice, a non-governmental organisation in Rio de Janeiro, told IPS.

He concurred with the MST that it is highly unlikely that the 143 non-commissioned officers, sergeants and military police who took part in the repression will be convicted. If a captain was let off the hook, it is even more probable that his subordinates will be acquitted, he pointed out.

Cavallaro said there were serious irregularities in the collection of vital forensic evidence. For example, the bullets were not removed from the victims’ bodies, and exams were not carried out to determine which of the military police had traces of gunpowder on their hands.

In addition, the registries of the guns used in the crackdown, indicating which military police shot the bullets that led to the deaths of protesters, have disappeared.

There was also failure to take proper witness testimony, and many eyewitnesses are afraid today that they will be killed if they agree to testify, complained Cavallaro and Trocate.

It is thus impossible to identify which military police killed 19 protesters and wounded 69. Furthermore, Amnesty International reported that there were clear indications that some of the victims had been summarily executed after surrendering, and that others had been mistreated and tortured.

According to Cavallaro, handing down identical sentences for all of the military police present that day, without determining which individuals were responsible for the murders, would be unjust.

But Freitas, assistant to the prosecution, hopes all of the military police involved will be convicted, without distinction, since they closed ranks and have kept a “pact of silence.”