MST Informa #6
December 14, 2001

This week the MST's Human Rights sector released a report with a partial survey of the human rights violations that occurred in 2001 against landless workers. The document highlights how the Brazilian government attacks and destroys the constitutional and legal guarantees that assure the landless, whether encamped or settled in land reform settlement projects, the right to the life, freedom, work and education.

These violations occur through the eviction, illegal arrest, death-threats and assassination of workers. This year alone, there have been more than 56 cases of the beating and/or torture of workers, more than 15 death-threats, 11 ordered arrests, 44 prosecuted workers, 3 convictions that are being contested, 179 imprisoned workers and 12 assassinations. Moreover, these numbers only refer to cases where the agricultural workers involved are a part of MST organized struggles.

The first major human rights violation is committed by the government, which allows more than 80,000 families to live in sub-human conditions in encampments, or tent cities, without housing, water, electricity and under the constant threat of gunmen and/or the police.

If an appeal were to be made to the MP, or Presidential decree #2027, inspections of occupied areas made in order to determine whether or not the landless families carry out a social function would be prohibited. This Provision allows landless families to remain camped on the land for a longer period of time. These conditions also violate various articles of the Federal Constitution (1, 3, 5, 184 and 186) and federal laws (4504/64, 8269/93 and 8177/91).

This way, as land occupation is a way for the landless to pressure the government to carry out land reform, the latifzndio, or large landholders, always win in the end. Instead of guaranteeing human dignity, the Federal Government continues to support large landowners and therefore maintaining the current agrarian structure, where 1% of landowners own 46% of the land and 5 million families remain landless.

This Presidential decree is the main cause of increased violence against workers. Landowners know that the Judiciary Power and the Police are not interested and/or are not able to put them behind bars. Knowing that their lands will not be inspected or disappropriated, they are free to contract gunmen.

On the other hand, there is no national prevention program or repercussions for the causes and consequences of rural violence. In cases of those who are assassinated, victims' children, wives, husbands, brothers, sisters and parents are left to depend on contributions made by their community, friends and family. In cases of imprisoned workers, victims are subjected to savage and degrading treatment in dirty prisons. They are forced to use marijuana, cocaine, alcohol and other drugs that infest the prisons. Once they receive death-threats, they begin to feel doubt, suspicion and fear of anything and everything.

The report divides the human rights violations into three areas: the right to life, freedom and work. Among the proposals to end human rights violations put forward in the report is the proposal to immediately suspend the Presidential decree that hinders inspections of occupied areas as well as the approval and sanction of the law that transfers human rights crimes to Federal Court.