Land rights news from Guatemala and Brazil

[Gerrard Winstanley]

Rural killings marked in Brazil 
By Steve Kingstone 
BBC News, Sao Paulo 	
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4917510.stm

In Brazil, thousands of people have been taking part in demonstrations 
to mark the 10th anniversary of a notorious massacre. 

Nineteen rural workers were shot dead by military police officers in 
April 1996 near the remote Amazon town of Eldorado dos Carajas. 

The victims had been blocking a road as part of a land rights protest. 

A decade on, only two officers involved have been prosecuted. Both 
have appealed and neither is behind bars. 

On Monday, land rights activists staged demonstrations across the 
country to protest at what they see as a culture of impunity. 

Anger 

The victims of the Carajas massacre are being remembered in a series 
of anniversary events. 

The mood at a demonstration in Sao Paulo was one of anger, because 10 
years after police officers gunned down 19 rural demonstrators, no one 
is behind bars. 

"There's no one in jail, nothing has happened," said one protestor. 
"So we're here to take a stand against impunity." 

Of the nearly 150 police officers on duty on the day of the massacre, 
only two were ever prosecuted. 

But late last year, they were freed by Brazil's Supreme Court, pending 
an appeal. 

Another trial seems unlikely in a country where only a tiny proportion 
of land-related killings end in prosecution. 

Carajas was truly shocking. But 10 years on, the rule of law in the 
Amazon is as shaky as ever. 

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/4917510.stm


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Gunmen kill two Guatemalan land rights leaders
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N06330322.htm

07 Apr 2006 03:09:12 GMT
Source: Reuters
	
GUATEMALA CITY, April 6 (Reuters) - Gunmen shot and killed two 
indigenous Guatemalan land rights leaders hours after their 
organization called for protests over a lack of agrarian reform, the 
country's human rights office said on Thursday.

The couple, a man and woman who were regional leaders of the National 
Indigenous and Farmers' Coordinating Organization, or CONIC, were 
killed late on Wednesday in their home by four gunmen dressed in 
black, the human rights ombudsman's office said in a statement.

Hours before the killings, CONIC, formed during Guatemala's 1960-1996 
civil war by plantation workers fighting for better wages and land, 
called for countrywide roadblocks to protest the government's failure 
to implement land reform.

Tension is high in parts of Guatemala's countryside as President Oscar 
Berger's government evicts groups of mostly Maya Indian landless 
farmers from agricultural land they took over in a wave of invasions 
under his predecessor.

The couple had been squatting on invaded land with 44 other families.