Camp Invasions, Assassination Attempts and Torture. Latest Attacks on Peasants in Brazil
A multitude of attacks have been reported on peasants and, above all, on peasants who organize and resist the usurpation of land from the latifundium. Again, more cases where the increase in latifundist violence against peasants – which has the help of the State – can be seen. We make a compilation of the latest reports of the attacks against the fighters of the struggle for land in Brazil.
New Hope Camp, Rondônia, invaded by police
On 25 November, military police invaded the New Hope camp in Rondônia in an attempt to evict the families that had been occupying the lands of the latifundium Capão da Onça since 15 November. It is the third attempt to evict the families without a court order, as reported by A Nova Democracia.
However, despite the attempts at the service of the latifundium, the peasants have completely clear that this land is theirs, even the latifundium does not has the property title “only has the purchase and sale document. They don’t have the title of the land.”
In contact with the League of Poor Peasants (LCP), the peasants decided to advance in their organization. They have been occupying the lands since 2007 in the region, but a military intervention evicted them from the lands. It is expected that in the upcoming months, they will dived the land between families and give property tittles by the organs of the peasants themselves.
Quilombolas of Minas Gerais (MG) denounce the murder attempt of leaders
“Last night a car passed by and fired three shots at the houses of the community,” says leader Antônio Cosme, in a video recorded on November 12. Since the beginning of November, Quilombolas of the Quilombo Baú, MG, have been denouncing attempts to assassinate community leaders. The report came to AND through the LCP.
In a note published on November 11 by the Commission of the Quilombola Communities, it is denounced that they met on November 6 with state authorities and ask for “hurrying in the processes of land regularization and guarantee the life of the quilombola people.” The longer it takes to give the land to the peasants, the more crimes against indigenous occur. During this year, the Quilombolas had already denounced threats of murder in March.
Military Police detain and torture peasants
On November 23, the police arrested and tortured peasants in Tocantins, as denounced by the Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (MST) and published by AND.
According to the MST, the area has more than 1,600 hectares and a part of it has been taken over by a big landlord. Thus, the eviction of the peasants was carried out hours after the peasants take over the land. Three people were arrested and one of them was brutally tortured. Simulating a gas chamber, they locked the person in the trunk of the car and threw in pepper spray.
This news comes just a month after it was reported that the civil police tortured peasants who occupied land in the Tierra Prometida camp, in Pará, near Tocatins. Five peasants were killed and others disappeared.
The League of Poor Peasants (LCP) denounced in a statement the murder of peasants who occupy land and strengthened the idea that crimes like these are not new. “In the Farm Santa Lúcia, in 2017, squatters were also murdered, and it was the quick denunciation of the LCP of the South of Pará and Tocantins, and then of the CPT, which prevented the crime from being presented as a conflict within the occupiers by the land grabbers. At that moment, we denounced the massacre as part of the increasing violence of the latifundium under Temer’s administration, as we had denounced the Gamela massacre in Maranhão and the Colniza massacre (the latter carried out by the Guaxeba, known in Rondônia as Sergeant Moisés, widely denounced by the LCP).” Seven years later, and with the help of the LCP, the peasants comment that they are still on their lands, and waiting for the National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform (INCRA) to resolve the matter.
