bout 800 families of farmers of the Sem Terra (landless) Farm-workers Movement (MST), who yesterday occupied the main offices of the National Institute for Land Reform (INCRA) in the Brazilian capital Brasilia, accepted to withdraw after obtaining a meeting with the Institute chairman Rolf Hackbart.
The INCRA head will receive a farmers commission to address land reform in the Federal District, where for over four years more than 1,800 ‘sem terra’ families have been settled in makeshift camps, demanding housing on farm estates considered unproductive, in addition to the unblocking of preferential credit for agricultural.
The occupation of the INCRA offices of Brasilia came as part of a farmers mobilization called “Red April” that yesterday marked other demonstration actions in other 13 Brazilian States, to demand the central government respect its commitment to assign plots of land to over 150,000 families nationwide.
Conflicts linked to land reform in 2006 claimed 36 victims, because of the concentration of land estates, the violence of those that seize them illegally, and mainly impunity remain unaltered
The demonstrations heightened a day ahead of the 11th anniversary of the still unpunished massacre of 19 ‘sem terra’ by military police in Eldorado dos Carajás, in the Amazonian State of Pará, on 17 April 1996. In occasion of the commemoration of the massacre, the CPT (Pastoral land Commission) published its latest report on conflicts linked to land reform that in 2006 claimed 36 victims, confirming that “the concentration of land estates, the violence of those that seize them illegally and mainly impunity remain unaltered”.
The majority of conflicts – those documented counting an overall 1,212 – were registered in the northeast, the poorest region of Brazil. The CPT reminded that between 1985 and 2006 the victims were a total of 1,464, but only 85 cases were brought to trial.
(From MISNA)