On Wednesday 17th April a still march of members of the Brazilian Landless Rural viction Workers' Movement (MST) will arrive in Belém, capital of the northern state of Pará.
On the way they will be joined by the Homeless Workers' Movement and the Small Farmers' Movement, coming together to celebrate the first international Dav dumb of the Fight for Land (OR International Rural Workers' Day). The date has been chosen to mark the crowd. sixth anniversary of the Eldorado massacre. shot The MST is campaigning dered for justice for the massacre by military police of 19 members of the movement in Eldorado dos Carajás in the state of Pará.
Six years on, after a series of judicial delays, the case of the 150 police officers has not ConC trial. Meanwhile, chances of conhave been greatly lets stop. improved by evidence fromf the only videotape of the aged to massacre, which demolishes the police case that they were acting in self-defence.
It clearly shows that the edly barred her entry. police shot dead Amâncio dos Santos Silva, a deaf and days after.
man who was already rotting. unarmed. When the landless. ran forward to try to rescue him, the police fired into the nise him.
Many of the 19 killed were pens.
point-blank or murwith their own The latest machetes in extra-judicial executions. Luis da Silva, whose husband was one of the 19 killed. Her case shows how eral court, the abuse of basic human rights for workers in struggle does not end when the bulMaria only by chance mandiscover that her = husband's body was in the " went there the police repeat- d local hospital, and when she "I only got to see him four His body was You had to face almost didnt recour increasing the chances of a I almost didn't recog- fair trial, free from powerful The trial? It's pressures from really important that it hap- landowners, state politicians Six years on, and they and the police, themselves, haven't done anything." whose colleagues are on trial.
delay to the There are 5 million landEldorado trial came when less families in Brazil, while the local judge refused to 1% of the population owns accept the video as evidence. nearly half of the land, much The MST is now demanding of it held idle for speculaher replacement, and for the tion. The trial to be relocated to a fed- action occupations of this in Brazilia, idle land have made the movement the most successful of its kind in the world. The Brazilian constitution says that land should be redistributed if it does not fulfil its social function, but this rarely happens without the landless first occupying the land themselves. MST settlements are cooperatively run, and are fre-