Daniella Jinkings Reporter Agência Brasil
Brasília – According to an official from the Catholic social action group, Pastoral da Terra - CPT, Dirceu Fumagalli, responsibility for the assassination of the farm workers (“extravistas”) and environment activists, Jose Claudio Ribeiro da Silva and Maria do Espirito Santo, belongs to the government.
Their names were on a list of people who had received death threats that the CPT regional (state of Pará) and the national CPT delivered to the Ministry of Justice in 2009, revealed Fumagalli.
“All assassinations are abominable, but this one, given the circumstances, is also emblematic,” declared Fumagalli, adding that the case throws light on how the problem of deforestation is treated in Brazil. “The loggers do the dirty work. They clear the land for the cattle ranchers. These forces have little to do with the rainforest itself or the people who actually live and work in the forest.[The forest and the people there are just obstacles – to be removed or destroyed],” he said.
Estimates by the CPT are that between 2001 and 2010, a total of 377 people were killed as a result of land conflicts in Brazil. The Ministry of Agrarian Development says that just in the state of Pará, during the same period, there were 58 confirmed assassinations related to land conflicts, with another 62 cases under investigation.
Fumagalli says the killings continue because the land ownership structure in Brazil remains unchanged. “Nothing has been done to alter it (“a estrutura fundiária nacional”). The concentration of land ownership continues,” said the CPT official.
President Dilma Rousseff has ordered the minister of Justice, Jose Eduardo Cardozo, to put the Federal Police and the federal government attorney office (“Ministerio Público Federal) into action in the case. At the local level, the Military Police of Pará are investigating the murders.
Allen Bennett – translator/editor The News in English
Link - Estado tem responsabilidade por assassinato de casal de extrativistas no Pará, diz Comissão Pastoral da Terra
