BRAZIL'S LANDLESS WORKERS MOVEMENT UNDER ATTACK

Three land-reform activists have been killed in the past few days in the same northeastern state in Brazil, a spokesman for Brazil's Rural Landless Workers' Movement, or MST, said Monday.

Antonio Jose dos Santos of MST, was stabbed 14 times on Saturday, two days after the government granted him a plot of expropriated ranchland after a four-year fight.

Landless Workers´ Liberation Movement (MSLT) regional coordinator Anilton Martins was assassinated in Itaiba on Friday shot ten times by four gunmen on motorbikes at a gas station. Martins reported to the Public Ministry 15 days ago that he had been receiving death threats for over two years but authorities did nothing.

Fifty two year-old Luiz Manoel de Menezes, president of the Rural Workers' Union, was assassinated on Sunday the 30th, when 2 shots were fired into his home.

"Landowners are acting against us with impunity using hired guns and the courts," said MST spokesman Carlos Magnata, who worked with dos Santos in Pernambuco before his murder.

In addition to the three murders, a number of encamped families have been ambushed by hired gunmen.

Last Friday around 10 armed gunmen encircled an MST encampment, in Altinho. The landless hid in the farm's headquarters, where shots were fired at them the entire morning. The encamped families made a call to the police, who arrived once the gunmen had already fled.

The National Institute for Colonization and Land Reform (INCRA) of Pernambuco is pushing for an in depth investigation with the Federal Police to solve these cases

However, few people are ever punished for killings in Brazil's rural areas where local courts and police are often allied to powerful landholders, according to the Catholic Church's Pastoral Land Commission which monitors human rights.

Separately, four MST leaders were given hefty sentences on Friday in Sao Paulo state for theft and destruction during a ranch invasion five years ago. Three of them are on the run. MST leaders say conservative judges and opposition parties are trying to criminalize their movement, which has the right under Brazil's constitution to occupy unused farmland and demand the government purchase it for resettlement.

Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement, Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST) in Portuguese, is the largest social movement in Latin America with an estimated 1.5 million landless members organized in 23 out 27 states. The MST carries out long-overdue land reform in a country mired by unjust land distribution. In Brazil, less than 3% of the population owns two-thirds of the land on which crops could be grown. For the last 25 years, the MST has fought for agrarian reform. Sources: Friends of the MST, WebIndia, Prensa Latina, Reuters AlertNet