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News from Brazil
supplied by Brazil Justice Net
Number 542, November 11, 2005
Brazilian Human Rights Lawyer Addresses Commission
by Emily Goldman of the RFK Memorial
The 2001 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award Laureate, Darci Frigo, was in Washington, DC from 16-22 October 2005 for a thematic hearing at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) at the Organization of American States dealing with rural violence in Para. The RFK Memorial took advantage of his stay in DC to visit several offices of Senators and Representatives of Congress, the Inter-American Development Bank, the Brazilian Embassy, and the relatively new Unit of Human Rights Defenders at the IACHR.
Frigo and his colleagues from Justiça Global and the Pastoral Land Commission (CPT) presented a preliminary report on rural violence in Pará to the IACHR (the final version, along with the English-language translation, is slated to come out within a week or two). It is a powerful and moving indictment of the ages-old impunity and human rights violations (including published death-threat lists and hundreds of assassinations in land-access cases) that continues to reign in Pará and gives some well-known examples (among them, Sister Dorothy Stang) as well as copious statistics gathered over the years by the CPT of the numbers of documented murders of agricultural workers, land-rights activists, religious and union leaders, and lawyers, and then contrasts that number with the tiny number of cases that have actually gone to trial and an infinitesimally small number of "mandantes" (those who contract killers) who are now behind bars (with of course a much higher number of thugs there). All of the meetings throughout the week revolved around the following three issues:
(1) the need to have justice done/due process/transparency in Stang case (including having one trial for all 5 defendants; having the trial in Belem rather than Altamira or Bacaja, as is currently being discussed); and having federal and state authorities undertake a full investigation to be able to identify and arrest all members of the shadowy consortium of illegal ranchers and loggers who were involved in Sister Dorothy's murder (after rapidly identifying the 5 who are currently behind bars, the investigation appears to have completely halted, from what the Stang family lawyers were able to gather on their recent trip to Brazil with David Stang)
(2) Sister Dorothy's case is simply the tip of the iceberg; hundreds of others have been murdered in similar situtations to her (i.e. land-access cases), and nothing has been done to find justice in those cases; so it is important to see the Stang case as holding out the possibility of setting a powerful legal precedent whereby others can be brought to justice, and the massive and deep-rooted problem of impunity dealt with fully
(3) studying the issue of the form of land reform that is being undertaken in Brazil, and the need for the World Bank to begin considering funding a land reform that upholds and strengthens human rights as well as provides wise, sustainable stewardship of the land and its natural resources (unlike the kind that the World Bank currently funds in Brazil, known as the "market-based" land reform); such a land reform is mandated by the Brazilian Constitution, and while INCRA (the government agency in charge of land reform) has had some success in settling families thusly, it is extremely hobbled by a lack of financial, technical, and human resources.
Darci noted in his hearing at the IACHR, when responding to a question from the Commissioners on the continuing problem of impunity in Para, that it a critical problem is that the Special Secretary for Human Rights not only had his budget slashed shortly after President Lula took office, but its ministerial status was recently withdrawn -- Darci pointed out that this shows a lack of political will on the part of the Lula Administration to really put human rights front-and-center and provide the resources needed to halt the impunity and violations.
The RFK Memorial and the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), along with Frigo and his Brazilian colleagues, launched the International Campaign Against Rural Violence in Brazil. The campaign will work on a number of fronts, including but not limited to the following
Provide periodic briefings and written updates on human rights in Brazil
Press the US Congress, the Brazilian Congress, and Lula Administration to take robust measures to end impunity
Press for justice in the Stang case
Press the US Congress to promote rule of law/justice initiatives in land-access cases
Press the US Congress to review current World Bank/Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) land reform programs
SOS - Cantareira Forest
by Dan McLaughlin
The green lungs of São Paulo run the risk of ending because of the irresponsibility of many.
The largest urban forest of the world, Serra da Cantareira, runs the risk of disappearing. The cause? The lack of attention on the part of the public authority and the irresponsibility of groups that have made this area a deposit for garbage and waste materials.
Jardim Damasceno is one of more than a hundred neighborhoods that border the foothills of Cantareira. For the past 12 years, on a piece of private land, more than a hundred thousand square meters, exists an illegal land fill. Each week more than 300 hundred dump trucks unload their waste materials in this land fill.
In 1998, Jornal Cantareira , a community newspaper of the region, denounced this illegal activity. This brought threats from those who were benefiting from this illegal activity on the staff of this newspaper. The response of the city government at the time was weak. There were some fines on the owners of the land and of the trucks, but this did not last long.
In 2002, waste material was once again being dumped in this area, and once again the city government applied fines on the land owner and the truck owners. But, once again, this activity on the part of the city government ended. With the end of the fines, there was an increase of waste dumping in the landfill.
At the end of 2004 and the beginning of 2005, those responsible for the dumping, created another larger landfill. Once again, the dump trucks returned in larger numbers, many of which were unregistered with Bureau of Motor Vehicles, dumping the waste in this larger landfill.
The Jornal Cantareira wrote up an article with photos. This time the Jornal sent copies of their article along with the photos to all the major means of communications in the city of São Paulo, along with copies to the City Secretary of the Environment and to the State Company on Technology and Environmental Sanitation (CETESB).
When the major means of communications and many environmental groups began to denounce this illegal activity, the City government and CETESB closed this landfill, declaring it to be a crime against the environment.
The landfill has been closed, but it has not deterred those who benefited from this illegal activity from threatening residents who live close to the landfill. The team that is responsible for the publishing of JORNAL CANTAREIRA, have also been threatened because of the publishing this story.
The Jornal Cantareira team reaffirm their commitment in defense of the environment, ecology, and the grassroots movements that over the past 20 years have manifested for better living conditions for the population.
The local population asks that
1) The city government continue its inspections in this area and decree that it is an area of social interest and therefore make it government land.
2) The owner of the land and those responsible for the land fill recover the area damaged by their illegal activity.
3) Organize an integral campaign to educate the population in order to preserve the SERRA da CANTAREIRA and its environs.
For those interested in participating in a letter-writing campaign, addresses, telephone and/or emails of the city and state entities on the environment are as follows:
Secretaria Municipal do Verde e Meio Ambiente
Secretário Sr. Eduardo Jorge
Telefone (11) 3372-2200
Email eduardojorge@prefeitura.sp.gov.br
Secretaria Estadual do Meio Ambiente
Secretário Prof. José Goldemberg
Telefone (11) 3030-6477/3030-6487
Address Av. Prof. Frederico Hermann Júnior, 345
CEP 05489-9000 São Paulo, SP
Sub-prefeitura Freguesia do Ó/Brasilândia
Telefone (11) 3859-4155/ 32931-2535
Assessoria de Comunicação
Email fhenrique@prefeitura.sp.gov.br
CETESB
Diretor-Presidente Sr. Rubens Lara
Telefone 3030-6087
Email info@cetesb.sp.gov.br
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