Brasília, April 28, 2004 (Agência Brasil) - Between 1985 and 2003, 1,349 people were victims of assassinations in the countryside, in 1,003 separate incidents. This balance sheet was presented yesterday (27) by Don Tomás Balduíno, president of the Catholic Church's Land Pastoral Commission (CPT), to the National Congress's Joint Parliamenary Investigating Commission (CPMI) in charge of examining questions related to land ownership.

According to the cleric, only 75 of these incidents have been judged up to now. 64 of the perpetrators were sentenced, and 44 were acquitted, which, in Balduíno's opinion, signals the growth of impunity in the country. "Impunity is the big incentive and promoter of crimes against rural workers," he told the deputies and senators.

Don Tomás also informed that crimes resulting from land disputes have increased during President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's Administration. 73 landless rural workers were killed in 2003, according to him. "The considerable increase in assassinations in the first year of Lula's government shows clearly that, when the Executive does not repress social movements, as is the custom in our country, the private power of the large estate assumes this responsibility," he affirmed.

In an interview following nearly three hours of testimony to the CPMI on the Land, the ex-bishop of the city of Goiás Velho, in the state of Goiás, pointed out that the number of deaths rose during Lula's Administration, because there was a "very great" expectation among unemployed rural workers, which stimulated and enlarged the contingent of people looking for land in which to work.

In Don Tomás's assessment, the settlement process promoted by the government is very slow. "Lula's government needs to discover the bottlenecks that are strangling the blessed agrarian reform," he recommended.

In his testimony the president of the CPT said that "squatting, without a doubt is" one of the most powerful instruments of domination and land concentration in the countryside. He presented official data from the Incra (National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform) showing that there is a total of approximately 100 million hectares of public land suspected of illegal occupation.

The bishop considers land sold to foreigners and multinationals another factor that makes it difficult to implement agrarian reform in the country. Agribusiness, especially in the Center-West region, where the bishop works, also plays a restraining and negative role when it comes to agrarian reform, in Don Tomás's view.

"We are talking about a model based on profits, always concentrated in the hands of a few and even accompanied by the dismissal of wage labor as a result of the introduction of powerful machinery and modernization through the use of informatics. Since we are dealing with export monoculture, there is always a growing demand for more and more area." He concluded by saying that the region is one of the ones that presents the highest index of violence. "The Center-West, the agribusiness paradise, is at the same time the hell of violence against workers."

Translator: David Silberstein