Police hunt killers of nun who fought for dispossessed
-14/02/05
Brazilian police have were searching the Amazon rainforests for two men they believe shot and killed an elderly American nun whose support for environmental causes and human rights provoked controversy in a remote jungle region of Amazonia.
Dorothy Stang, a 74-year-old nun who lived in Brazil for almost 30 years, was shot dead at the weekend near Anapu, a small town in Para state.
Known for her work defending peasant farmers from illegal loggers and ranchers she was on her way to a meeting with local activists about land reform when two gunmen approached her and shot her three times in the face, police said.
One of Brazil’s most respected ministers said she believed that gunmen wanted to silence Sister Dorothy because she refused to stop speaking out against the powerful loggers and ranchers who have carved up large parts of the Amazon into their personal fiefdoms.
She recently met the national Human Rights Secretary Nilmario Miranda to report that four local peasants had received death threats from loggers and ranchers.
The environment minister, Marina Silva, has gone to the region to oversee the investigation in person and said she would do her utmost to find the killers.
“Brazil is going to ensure justice is done here so that intimidation does not impede land reform or the battle against illegal logging,” she said.
Brazil’s first left-wing president has so far failed to deliver on his promise to settle 400,000 landless peasants and the country continues to have massive wealth gaps and chronic social inequality. President da Silva also faces pressure to open tracts of forest land to boost farm exports and support strong economic growth. Rights groups compared Sister Dorothy’s death at a settlement for landless peasants close to Anapu in the north of the country to the murder in 1988 of Chico Mendes, the rubber tapper who called international attention to Amazon rainforest destruction.
Police hunt killers of nun who fought for dispossessed
-14/02/05
Brazilian police have were searching the Amazon rainforests for two men they believe shot and killed an elderly American nun whose support for environmental causes and human rights provoked controversy in a remote jungle region of Amazonia.
Dorothy Stang, a 74-year-old nun who lived in Brazil for almost 30 years, was shot dead at the weekend near Anapu, a small town in Para state.
Known for her work defending peasant farmers from illegal loggers and ranchers she was on her way to a meeting with local activists about land reform when two gunmen approached her and shot her three times in the face, police said.
One of Brazil’s most respected ministers said she believed that gunmen wanted to silence Sister Dorothy because she refused to stop speaking out against the powerful loggers and ranchers who have carved up large parts of the Amazon into their personal fiefdoms.
She recently met the national Human Rights Secretary Nilmario Miranda to report that four local peasants had received death threats from loggers and ranchers.
The environment minister, Marina Silva, has gone to the region to oversee the investigation in person and said she would do her utmost to find the killers.
“Brazil is going to ensure justice is done here so that intimidation does not impede land reform or the battle against illegal logging,” she said.
Brazil’s first left-wing president has so far failed to deliver on his promise to settle 400,000 landless peasants and the country continues to have massive wealth gaps and chronic social inequality. President da Silva also faces pressure to open tracts of forest land to boost farm exports and support strong economic growth. Rights groups compared Sister Dorothy’s death at a settlement for landless peasants close to Anapu in the north of the country to the murder in 1988 of Chico Mendes, the rubber tapper who called international attention to Amazon rainforest destruction.