Human Rights Monitor

The reinvestment in agriculture, triggered by the 2008 food price crisis, is essential to the concrete realization of the right to food. However, in a context of ecological, food and energy crises, the most pressing issue regarding reinvestment is not how much, but how.

What can be concluded from this rapid journey through the last ten years is that the Brazilian State has always walked hand-in-hand with large landowners. It has always protected their interests and, at the same time, repressed workers who organize to defend their rights.

On July 14, 2009, 120 families were forcibly displaced. They are from the estate of Las Pavas, located in the administrative district of Buenos Aires in the municipality of El Peñón in the southern Bolívar province. Members of the National Police and the Anti-disturbance squads entered into the community, destroying 7 houses, sacking their belongings and removing the families, including 100 children, from their houses.

In November 2008 it was revealed that the Korean company Daewoo would have signed a contract for leasing 1.3 million ha for 99 years to produce maize and palm oil in Madagascar. The whole harvest was intended to be exported to Korea and the terms of the contract were skewed in favour of the company.

Last June 17, about 300 landless (the vast majority of them women, children and elderly) were forcibly evicted from two camps of the “Movimento de Trabalhadores Sem Terra” (MST), located on leased and private land -therefore legally occupied- in the vicinity of Fazenda Guerra, in Coqueiros do Sul, Northern region of the state of Rio Grande do Sul.

EMERGENCY NETWORK

0720APHL 03-12-2007

Press Release - FIAN International and La Via Campesina - Global Campaign for Agrarian Reform

In response to the events of the past 21st of October, where armed guards contracted by Syngenta, a Swiss transnational corporation which produces genetically modified crops and seeds, invaded the Tierra Libre campsite of the Brazilian Landless Workers Movement (MST) which is affiliated to the Via Campesina in Parana, Brazil. The armed men entered and shot dead Valmir Mota de Oliviera, also known as Keno, a leader of the MST, injured several others, and made death threats against the other land workers present in the campsite.