LCP Denouncement of Operation Godos and the Attack on the of Area Tiago Campin dos Santos
We hereby share an unofficial translation of an article by A Nova Democracia.
The League of Poor Peasants (LCP), through its National Commission, issued a statement today regarding the so-called “Operation Godos,” carried out the day before yesterday by the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Rondônia (MP-RO) and the Military Police (PM-RO) against the Tiago Campin dos Santos peasant area.
In a statement, the LCP categorically affirms that none of those arrested are members of its organization and that, in fact, it was an offensive aimed at destroying the gains of more than 600 peasant families in the Tiago Campin dos Santos area.
According to the movement, during the operation, “peasants’ houses were broken into, goods stolen, men and women arrested, and resident Elias was executed by BOPE (Special Police Operations Battalion) and his wife was shot and is hospitalized in serious condition.” Furthermore, outside the area, “the occupiers’ lawyer, who is diabetic and in a post-operative state, with part of her foot amputated and undergoing surgical procedures to prevent gangrene, was imprisoned in a common cell without any conditions to clean her wounds, was prevented from bringing her insulin and other medications, and accused of the crime of ‘notifying her clients of repossession orders,’ that is, of practicing her profession,” the LCP emphasizes.
Regarding the accusations that have been piling up in the so-called trash press of Rondônia, the National Commission affirms that “LCP is not a criminal organization, much less a terrorist one; it is a class-based and combative organization of poor peasants in Brazil. We defend and struggle for the Agrarian Revolution to definitively eradicate backwardness, misery, hunger, and the brutal centuries-long exploitation against our people, especially peasants, indigenous people, and quilombola communities! To end the injustices of a handful of billionaires who own everything and are parasites of the Nation and the vast majority who have nothing! We fight for and give land to poor peasants who have little or no land. And we will not give up the armed self-defense of the masses in the face of your centuries-old reactionary violence and privileges of having the police force of the old State in your hands ,” LCP declares.
Beyond the terror perpetrated by the old State itself at the Tiago Campin encampment, the operation has been used to confuse public opinion, using it as an instrument in internal disputes within the old political system of Rondônia, which have nothing to do with the LCP. According to the mainstream press, among those detained and identified as “leaders of the LCP” are a city councilor and a former city councilor from Nova Mamoré, as well as the current municipal undersecretary. However, it is widely reported that the LCP publicly advocates for an electoral boycott and actively participates in it, mobilizing peasants in constant activities to prevent them from voting.
Regarding this, the statement affirms: “The so-called association of rural producers of Tiago dos Santos is a pure deception set up by the Bolsonaro-supporting lawyer Dr. Luiz Carlos Teodoro, from the supposed human rights commission of the OAB-RO (Brazilian Bar Association of Rondônia), with elements opposed to the struggle and who benefited from and colluded with Flávio from INCRA (National Institute for Colonization and Agrarian Reform) to oppose the LCP and sabotage the class-based organization and the revolutionary struggle, they are spies and informants of the police, infiltrators of the reaction. But it’s no use, the masses know and understand very well what the LCP is, its organization of struggle and combat! Nothing and no one will stop the class-based and combative organization of the people, the leaders and militants of the LCP do not fear repression nor making sacrifices, our struggle is sacred! Let the deceivers, saboteurs, informants and defamers of the LCP beware!”
The LCP recalled a passage from its previous statement explaining why they are so violently attacked: “ With the formation of the Tiago Campim dos Santos Revolutionary Area, along with the Dois Amigos area, the region’s economy, in just over 4 years, grew more than it had in the last 50. And it was with much sweat and hard work, amidst constant persecution, violent police incursions against the people, and murderous attacks by gunmen. The Tiago Campin dos Santos community has, in fact, become a source of relief for districts like União Bandeirantes and small towns like Nova Mamoré. It should be noted that all the villages and small municipalities throughout this region stretching from Porto Velho to Acre, as well as other vast areas of the state, were the result of land occupations by peasants, even before the Heroic Peasant Resistance of Santa Elina in 1995.”
The full statement can be read and shared by downloading it below:
