Reuters
January 23, 2002

SAO PAULO - The leader of Brazil's main pressure group for landless rural workers was shot once in the shoulder as he escaped an ambush in the west of Sao Paulo state on the weekend, a member of the group said.

Jose Rainha Junior, the general coordinator of the Landless Movement (MST), was attacked as he left a farm in Pontal de Paranapanema, 159 miles (256 km) west of Sao Paulo, which had been invaded by MST members earlier in the day.

"There was an ambush with three armed men," Rainha told local Globo TV from his hospital bed. "One took out a gun and said 'Rainha, your time is up,' and started shooting. I got out of the car and started running zigzags.... I jumped into a hedge and realized I had been hit."

An MST human rights representative earlier said Rainha was ambushed by the brother of the owner of the farm and 18 hired gunmen on horseback.

Rainha was receiving treatment for a light wound in his right shoulder, he said. Several other MST members who were with him were also being treated for minor injuries.

The MST, one of Brazil's few strong advocacy groups, advocates illegal occupation of unused farmland for poor rural workers in this country of 170 million people, in which a handful of the rich own the vast majority of arable land.

Protests by Brazil's landless have periodically led to violent confrontations with the police. In the most violent in recent times, 19 rural workers were killed by military police during a land occupation in the Amazon in 1995.