Activist killed on GM action in Brazil — call to action for 8th November

Call for day of action on 8th Novem­ber in sol­i­dar­i­ty with Brazil­ian GM activists after shoot­ings on anti-GM land squat in Brazil

On Octo­ber 21 at 1:30 p.m., gun­men attacked a Via Campesina encamp­ment locat­ed at Syngenta’s 127-hectare farm used for field tri­als of genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied crops in San­ta Tereza do Oeste, in Paraná, Brazil. Dur­ing the attack, Valmir Mota de Oliveira, 42 years old (known as “Keno,”) activist and leader of the of the Movi­men­to Sem Ter­ra (the Brazil­ian Land­less Rur­al Work­ers Move­ment), was killed at point-blank range by two shots to the chest. Two oth­er MST lead­ers, Cel­so Bar­bosa and Célia Apare­ci­da Lourenço, were pur­sued by the gun­men but man­aged to escape. Work­ers Gen­til Couto Viera, Jonas Gomes de Queiroz, Domin­gos Bar­retos, Izabel Nasci­men­to de Souza, and Hud­son Cardin were seri­ous­ly injured.

Call for day of action on 8th Novem­ber in sol­i­dar­i­ty with Brazil­ian GM activists after shoot­ings on anti-GM land squat in Brazil

On Octo­ber 21 at 1:30 p.m., gun­men attacked a Via Campesina encamp­ment locat­ed at Syngenta’s 127-hectare farm used for field tri­als of genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied crops in San­ta Tereza do Oeste, in Paraná, Brazil. Dur­ing the attack, Valmir Mota de Oliveira, 42 years old (known as “Keno,”) activist and leader of the of the Movi­men­to Sem Ter­ra (the Brazil­ian Land­less Rur­al Work­ers Move­ment), was killed at point-blank range by two shots to the chest. Two oth­er MST lead­ers, Cel­so Bar­bosa and Célia Apare­ci­da Lourenço, were pur­sued by the gun­men but man­aged to escape. Work­ers Gen­til Couto Viera, Jonas Gomes de Queiroz, Domin­gos Bar­retos, Izabel Nasci­men­to de Souza, and Hud­son Cardin were seri­ous­ly injured.

To any­one who has been part of the fight against GM crops and cor­po­rate con­trol of our lives in the UK, from stick­ing “GM” labels on a pack­et of bean feast to sneak­ing through the fields at the dead of night to destroy the crops and sab­o­tage the test-sites: Keno and his com­pan­ions are us. It is an acci­dent of class pol­i­tics and geog­ra­phy we are not (yet) receiv­ing death threats.

Via Campesina had pre­vi­ous­ly occu­pied the site in Brazil because of Syn­gen­ta’s ille­gal devel­op­ment of genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied (GM) seeds. Syn­gen­ta is the world’s largest pro­duc­er of agro­chem­i­cals and the third largest com­mer­cial seed pro­duc­er. They pulled out of the GM in the UK after their last attempt at a field tri­al was destroyed.

At dawn on Octo­ber 21st, about 150 mem­bers of Via Campesina reoc­cu­pied Syn­gen­ta’s site, where they encoun­tered four armed secu­ri­ty guards, who were dis­armed and left the site. At about 1 in the after­noon, Via Campesina reports, “a bus stopped in front of the entry gate and about forty armed gun­men got out, fir­ing machine guns at the peo­ple that they saw in the encamp­ment. They broke down the gate, then shot [Mota].

Mota, Lourenço and Bar­bosa had been receiv­ing death threats and intim­i­da­tion since the begin­ning of the year. They still con­tin­ued to take action.

We need to act in sol­i­dar­i­ty, because this is the panora­ma, and it is only going to get worse. Sick though it is, respons­es from ‘con­cerned cit­i­zens’ in coun­tries like ours can help pro­tect activists like Keno and have an impact on com­pa­nies like Syn­gen­ta.

La Via Campesina are call­ing on all orga­ni­za­tions and move­ments to orga­nize protest actions at Syn­gen­ta offices on the 8th Novem­ber in the coun­tries where they are based, and to hand deliv­er let­ters to the Brazil­ian and Swiss embassies, with the fol­low­ing demands:

1. The pun­ish­ment of the mate­r­i­al per­pe­tra­tors and intel­lec­tu­al authors of this crime.
2. Expro­pri­a­tion of Syn­gen­ta lands, to be used for the pro­duc­tion of native seeds, and that these lands be admin­is­tered by rur­al peas­ants and farm work­ers.
3. The expul­sion of Syn­gen­ta from Brazil.
4. That the Brazil­ian gov­ern­ment head­ed by Pres­i­dent Luis Igna­cio Lula da Sil­va adopt mea­sures to ensure the phys­i­cal integri­ty of the rur­al farm work­ers who are threat­ened by the armed men con­tract­ed by Syn­gen­ta.
5. That all organ­i­sa­tions back up the ini­tia­tives of Amnesty Inter­na­tion­al in their call to repu­di­ate and con­demn the actions of Syn­gen­ta.
6. That all organ­i­sa­tions of Via Campesina in all coun­tries orga­nize days of action and protest in the Swiss and Brazil­ian Embassies, as well as at the offices of Syn­gen­ta this Thurs­day 8th Novem­ber and on the 10th of Decem­ber con­demn­ing this crim­i­nal act.
7. To send let­ters of protest to the fol­low­ing address­es:

Gov­er­nador do Esta­do do Paraná
Exmo Gov­er­nador do Esta­do do Paraná
Sr. Rober­to Requião de Mel­lo e Sil­va
Palá­cio Iguaçu
Praça Nos­sa Sen­ho­ra de Salete, s/nº, 3º andar
Cen­tro Cívi­co 80.530–909
Curitiba/PR — Brasil
Fax: + 55 41 3350 2935
Saudação: Vos­sa Excelência/ Your Excel­len­cy

Min­istro da Justiça
Exmo Min­istro da Justiça
Sr. Tar­so Gen­ro
Esplana­da dos Min­istérios, Blo­co “T”
70712–902 — Brasília/DF — Brasil
Fax: + 55 61 3322–6817
Saudação: Vos­sa Excelência/ Your Excel­len­cy

Cópias para:
Sec­re­taria Espe­cial de Dire­itos Humanos
Exmo. Secretário Espe­cial
Sr. Paulo de Tar­so Van­nuchi
Esplana­da dos Min­istérios — Blo­co “T” — 4º andar
70.064–900 — Brasília/DF — Brasil
Fax: + 55 61 3226 7980
Saudação: Vos­sa Excelência/ Your Excel­len­cy

Copia al MST Brasil y Via Campesina : mst­pr [NOSPAM] mst.org.br
via­cam­pesina [NOSPAM] viacampesina.org
Send us a short report and pho­tos of the actions orga­nized to:
via­cam­pesina [NOSPAM} viacampesina.org

SAMPLE LETTER –
Dear Sir:
I, [YOUR NAME / NAME OF ORGANIZATION] am writ­ing to express my grave con­cern with regard to the Octo­ber 21 mur­der of Valmir Mota de Oliveira, also known as Keno, of the Move­ment of Land­less Work­ers (MST) and Via Campesina, in the Brazil­ian state of Paraná, who was shot twice and killed by armed gun­men on an exper­i­men­tal GMO farm of Syn­gen­ta Seeds in San­ta Tereza do Oeste Paraná, Brazil. Keno’s death is a tremen­dous loss for his fam­i­ly, for those strug­gling for social jus­tice and human rights in Brazil, and for the inter­na­tion­al net­work of friends and allies who con­tin­ue to be shocked by the bru­tal­i­ty of agribusi­ness expan­sion in Brazil.
It has been doc­u­ment­ed that at 1:30 p.m. of the day of the attack, a bus stopped in front of the entrance gate to the farm and an armed mili­tia of approx­i­mate­ly 40 heav­i­ly armed gun­men got out, fir­ing at the peo­ple in the encamp­ment. They broke down the gate, pur­sued and killed activist Keno with two shots to the chest, attempt­ed to kill two oth­er lead­ers, shot five oth­er land­less work­ers, and severe­ly beat Isabel do Nasci­men­to de Souza, who remains in seri­ous con­di­tion at the hos­pi­tal.
In addi­tion, it has been not­ed that Syn­gen­ta was using the ser­vices of an armed mili­tia which was act­ing through a front com­pa­ny, NF Secu­ri­ty, in con­junc­tion with the Rur­al Soci­ety of the West­ern Region (SRO) and the Move­ment of Rur­al Pro­duc­ers (MPR), which are tied to agribusi­ness.
While an inquiry has been opened in order to inves­ti­gate these denun­ci­a­tions against your com­pa­ny and NF Secu­ri­ty, we insist that you imme­di­ate­ly sus­pend all con­tract­ing of pri­vate mili­tias in Brazil to avoid any fur­ther vio­la­tions of human rights.
Please see to it that the indi­vid­u­als involved in this attack, who are inti­mate­ly linked to and paid by your com­pa­ny, are brought to jus­tice. Also, please ensure that your com­pa­ny avoids fur­ther alter­ca­tions with Brazil’s human rights and social jus­tice move­ments, and that the right of Brazil’s peo­ple to peace­ful­ly orga­nize be respect­ed by your Brazil-based employ­ees and func­tionar­ies.
Respect­ful­ly,
[YOUR NAME / NAME OF ORGANIZATION]
[LOCATION]