PRESS STATEMENT
28 November 2007
the REPRESSION of PEASANTS & POOR PEOPLE in SOUTHERN PARA
The Workers League and the National Commission of the League of Poor Peasants denounces the violence, imprisonment and outrages against poor peasants in the Pará State, in the north of the country. By the ordinance of Pará State governor Ana Júlia Carepa ( from the Workers Party, led by Lula), a criminal operation was deflagrated against the people of the area. Since Monday, November 19, the so-called "Operation Peace on the Countryside" (in actual terms "Operation Violence on the Countryside") unchained by the police, the Army and the Federal Roads Police. The poor and honest people of Southern Pará, who occupy the immense farms in fight for survival, were hunted, beaten and treated like animals on the basis that they occupy farm lands. In their struggle to survive, landless poor peasants occupy some of the immense farm lands that are owned big landlords.
We denounce the violence and arbitrary imprisonment of more than 100 peasants and leaders of workers unions. We denounce the campaign of criminalization of the League of Poor Peasants (LCP) and the terror campaign launched by the police troops in service of the landlords.
We strongly denounce the hysterical and reactionary campaign led by the bourgeois press, such as the magazine "Veja" and the daily paper "Folha de São Paulo", the spokespersons of thief landlords, big bourgeoisie and banks.
We denounce the war operation unchained against more than a thousand families of poor peasants who occupied the Latifundium Forkilha, a swath of 22 thousand hectares. These lands were in the hands of the slaver landlord and landgrabber Jairo Andrade, located in the city of Santa Maria das Barreiras, Southern Pará.
Jairo Andrade Bezerra, who died 4 years ago, had his name included in the Dirty List of Slave Work, convicted for maintaining 97 workers enslaved in Forkilha Farm. Despite his involvement in the slave work case, Jairo Andrade always received voluminous resources of the government since the end of the 60's, under the pretext that he is investing in those unproductive lands. Jairo Andrede was accused of hiring gunmen to murder the former-deputy and lawyer of peasants Paulo Fonteles, as well as murder of countless peasants. Yet in an interview with the newspaper "O Estado de São Paulo", on November 5, 1994, Jairo Andrade was undaunted: he described the murders, informed where he buried the victims, and made threats. As usually is the case with the crimes of the landlords in the country, nothing happened to this thief and murderer, who confessed his crimes.
During the hateful war operation against the peasants, the Army forces blocked the highway BR-158, between the cities of Redenção and Santa Maria das Barreiras, in Southern Pará, so that the military and civilian police troupes would more comfortably carry out the atrocities against the peasants and to evict 21 lands occupied by them. This true war operation counted with about three hundred policemen from the Command of Special Missions (CME), civil policemen, military firemen, Roads Department and experts from the Center of Expertise, of the Integrated Center of Operations (CIOP) and of the Integrated Strategic Center of the Public Safety Department of Pará (Segup). The operation used more than 40 cars and buses, four helicopters, and high technology equipments.
The governor of Pará, Ana Júlia Carepa, unchained this ferocious repression following the campaign ordered by the landlords. The operation was also orchestrated by the reactionary press, mainly the magazine "Veja" and newspaper "Folha de São Paulo", which criminalize the peasants, treating them as "thieves" and encouraging the repression against the poor people and protecting the thief landlords. After a series of slanderous, provocative and reactionary reports of the magazine "Veja", which treated the peasants and the people of the south of Pará as a "group of criminals", the governor from PT enforced furious attacks against the fair peasants struggle.
We demand the immediate release of peasants and end to repression!
The land is for those who work in it!
Conquer the land, destroy the latifundium!
Workers League
National commission of the League of Poor Peasants
Send messages against the criminalization of poor peasants to the e-mails below:
Pará State Government;
Governor Ana Júlia Carepa: agenda@pa.gov.br
Ministry of Justice
Minister Tarso Genro: gabinetemj@mj.gov.br
Human Rights Commission of the Federal Deputies Chamber
President Luiz Couto: cdh@camara.gov.br / dep.luizcouto@camara.gov.br
Special Secretariat of Human Rights of Presidency of the Republic
Minister Paulo Vanuchi: direitoshumanos@sedh.gov.br