High-Profile Brazilian Land Rights Activist Murdered

http://www.oneworld.net/
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High-Profile Brazilian Land Rights Activist Murdered

Thu Jan 16, 5:26 PM ET

Jim Lobe, OneWorld US
World - OneWorld.net

The leader of one of Brazil's largest indigenous groups was murdered this week by unidentified gunmen, according to London-based Survival International which issued a statement Wednesday condemning the killing and noting that it was the third assassination of an Indian in Brazil during the first two weeks of 2003.

Marcos Veron, a prominent Guarani-Kaiowa tribal leader in the southwest state of Mato Grosso do Sul, was shot in the head and died at a local missionary hospital, local news media reported. His 14-year-old nephew was reportedly also shot and other Indians beaten in the attack, which is now being investigated by state and federal authorities.

Believed to have been about 70 years old, Veron led a group of some 350 Guarani-Kaiowa who have been trying to reclaim land seized by ranchers and farmers some 50 years ago. In recent months, they had been living on a 22-acre strip alongside a highway bordering land they claim as their own.

They have tried repeatedly and non-violently to re-occupy the disputed land, from which their parents and grandparents were forcibly expelled in the late 1940s. Veron told reporters during a brief re-occupation several months ago, "This here is my life, my soul...If you take me away from this land, you take my life."

Two years ago, Veron toured Europe to publicize the plight of Brazilian Indians, and particularly the 20,000-strong Guarani-Kaiowa, long pressured by the government and settlers to leave their lands and confined to reservations and small plots of land.

In a landmark decision two months ago, the Brazilian Ministry of Justice returned an area of land, known as Cerro Marangatu, to 400 Guarani-Kaiowa whose forbears were violently removed more than 50 years ago. The unprecedented ruling gave new hope to other community members over outstanding claims on their ancestral lands.

While the government of former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso launched a major initiative to demarcate Indian lands, farmers and ranchers who live in the regions brought a series of legal challenges in state courts
against the move.

Veron was the leader of a group that tried to return to their land at Takuara in 1999, only to be expelled some months later by armed police and soldiers acting under an order by a state court. The group have since been camped along the highway hoping for a decree similar to the one granted the Cerro Marangatu community.

The circumstances of Veron's killing Monday are unclear. While one news report said Veron and a group of other Takuara community members were attacked by armed men when they entered an area under dispute, a privately-run farm of about 23,000 acres, other reports said the Indians were attacked along the highway.

Indigenous groups and their advocates are hoping that the demarcation effort will speed up under Luis Inacio "Lula" da Silva who succeeded Cardoso as president at the start of this year. His electoral program called for "deep and substantial changes [in national policy] to meet the yearnings of...indigenous people."

Lula's Workers Party has been an outspoken advocate for indigenous rights for decades, and he has personally visited parts of Brazil where the struggle of its estimated 350,000 Indians has been most difficult.

Survival's director Stephen Corry said Wednesday, "The terrible plight of the Guarani-Kaiowa, and the many other tribes without land in Brazil, is the most urgent issue facing the new President."

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