Latin American Solidarity Network (LASNET)

Friday April 17, 12 Noon
At GPO, Corner of Elizabeth and Bourke Street
Melbourne-City

More Info: lasnet@latinlasnet.org, call 0414 970 418 or 0400 914 944

And support the Declaration of the Rights of Peasants

(download doc in PDF)

Since 1996 April 17 has been declared by La Via Campesina “International day of Peasant's Struggles”. This day commemorates the slaughter by the Brazilian police of 19 peasants of the “landless” movement (MST-Brazil) while they mobilized to get access to some land. 13 years later, the struggle for recognition of peasant rights remains a priority of La via Campesina.
The current crises (of finance, climate, energy, food and biodiversity) have highlighted the responsibility, fragility and absurdity of the liberal economic system.

From MST(Brazil Landless Workers Movement)

...“The 17th of April is already considered by Via Campesina as the International Day of the Peasant Struggle. In recent years, we saw in the whole world and especially here in Brazil, an offensive against the campesinos/as, a wave of the criminalisation of their organisations and their militants. Sectors of the judicial power, allied with the conservative State governments, have taken various initiatives with these objectives. Happily, there was an immediate reaction in Brazilian society and at the international level which inhibited their continuation. However, these conservative segments, using the apparatus of the State, continue to be active and disposed to criminalising the social movements in the rural areas.

So, we (MST) are suggesting that there should be realised demonstrations at the Brazilian Embassies, Central Places and others, with as many participants as possible, and always related to the 25 years of the MST.”...

Some Background:

Why April 17?

The massacre of Eldorado de Carajás

Because they had been evicted from their land more than two years earlier and because all their attempts to get the right to settle down on an unproductive land had failed, around 1,500 landless peasants and their families, members of MST, the Brazil's Landless Peasants Movement, decided to march to the state capital of Pará, to present their demands.

The march stopped on the highway at Eldorado de Carajás, as pregnant women and

children were tired and needed to rest.

At about 4pm on 17 April 1996, 68 military police from the Paraupebas Platoon arrived and at 4.30pm 87 police arrived from the other direction of Marabá. The peasants were then caught between two platoons of police. After firing tear-gas, the police raised their machine guns to body level and began firing into the crowd. The crowd dispersed as people began to realise they were being shot at with live ammunition.

The first to fall and die was Amâncio Dos Santos Silva, known as "Surdo-Mudo" ("deaf-mute"). Unable to hear the shots, he took longer than the others to understand what was happening.

In total, 19 peasants were killed, 69 were severely injured. Among the victims, at least 10 of the peasants were extrajudicially executed after they had been overpowered. Others, although killed from a distance, were shot in the head or thorax.

More information:

www.mst.org.br
www.viacampesina.org
www.latinamericansolidaritynetwork.org

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¡Únete al Día Internacional de la Lucha Campesina! 17 de Abril de 2009

Y Apoya la Declaración de los Derechos de las Campesinas y de los Campesinos!
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