måndag 25 februari 2013

MST ledare dödade i Brasilien

Since the first of the year, two landless workers of the Brazilian Landless Workers Movement (MST) have been assassinated in the state of Rio de Janeiro. Additionally, the confessed leader of the militia responsible for the massacre at Felisburgo, state of Minas Gerais has eluded justice for nine years. We want the Ministry of Justice to investigate the killings in Rio de Janeiro and push the prosecution of the man responsible for the Felisburgo massacre.  
 
Impunity for violence against the MST and all landless workers must end.
 
Below is information on the recent deaths of landless workers in the state of Rio de Janeiro as well as information on the status of the prosecution of the confessed leader of the militia responsible for the Felisburgo massacre.
 
Please sign our petition against impunity to the Minister of Justice and the Brazilian ambassador to the United States.  You can find the petition and sign it by clicking HERE.
 
Please let the Ministry of Justice in Brazil know that the people of the world are watching what is happening in Brazil and demand justice for the victims of violence.
 
Please let the MST and all landless workers in Brazil know that the people of the world support them in their struggle against impunity and for justice.
 
Thank you,
 
Jeffrey Frank
National Coordinator
Friends of the MST

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Cícero Guedes, Coordinator of the Occupation of the Cambahyba Mill, Is Assassinated in Rio
 
Rural worker and MST activist Cícero Guedes was assassinated by gunmen on Friday, January 25 near the Cambahyba Mill, in the township of  Campos dos Goytacazes (RJ).
 
Cícero was shot in the head when he left the settlement on his bicycle. Born in Alagoas, he was a cane cutter and coordinated the MST occupation of the mill, which is a complex of seven farms totaling 3500 hectares.
 
This large estate (latifundio) was ruled unproductive according to the decision made by Federal Judge Dario Ribeiro Machado Junior, issued in June. The area belongs to the late Heli Ribeiro Gomes, former deputy governor of Rio and is now controlled by his heirs.
 
Cícero Guedes had been a settler since 2002 in the Brava Gente Ranch in the north of Rio de Janeiro state in the Zumbi dos Palmares settlement, but he continued to carry on the struggle for agrarian reform.  He was a source of knowledge about agro-ecology for the comrades in the Movement as well as for the students and professors of the University of Fluminense North.
 
Read more HERE.
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Another MST Activist is Murdered in Campos dos Goytacazes (RJ)
 
The murder of the rural farmer Regina occurs eleven days after the execution of Cicero Guedes dos Santos, 48, leader of the MST in Campos dos Goytacazes (RJ).
 
Strong women have always contributed to the militancy of the Landless Workers Movement (MST) and the Pastoral Land Commission (CPT) in Rio de Janeiro. This is how the state secretary of the MST describes the rural producer, Regina dos Santos Pinho, 56, murdered in the settlement Zumbi dos Palmares. Without any contact with the neighborhood since Sunday (February 3, 2013), her body was found only on Wednesday (February 6, 2013).
 
Read more HERE.
 
 

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MST and Allies of the Triangulo Launch a Campaign for Justice for Felisburgo
 
Last Saturday, February 15, 2013, about 100 of the workers of the MST and supporters of the Agrarian Reform, held an action to launch the Campaign for Justice for Felisburgo in the Settlement Emiliano Zapata, in Uberlândia, Triangulo Mineiro.

The campaign demands the conviction of the confessed plantation owner Adriano Chafik Luedyna, responsible for the Massacre of Felisburgo and for the seventeen gunmen who participated in the crime, apart from (1) the immediate expropriation, for purposes of agrarian reform, of the Nova Alegria plantation, where the massacre occurred, (2) compensation and redress for the victims, (3) ending violence against rural workers and (4) the implementation of land reform.
 
Read more HERE.