Brazil Activist Killed, Others Threatened
10/28/97
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Headline: Brazil Activist Killed, Others Threatened
Source: The Environment News Service
Date: 10/28/97
Copyright 1997 ENS, Inc.
SAN FRANCISCO, California, October 28, 1997 (ENS) - Anti-dam activist
Fulgencio Manuel da Silva died of gunshot wounds in northeastern Brazil on
October 17, and now the leaders of the campaign to protect the Atlantic
coastal rainforests, Wigold Schaeffer and Miriam Prochnow, have received a
barrage of telephone death threats.
Rainforest Action Network's Brazil Program Director, Brazilian born Beto
Borges, has just returned from Brazil to the organization's home base in
San Francisco with the news of an opposing campaign - a campaign to defeat
the environmental protectionists.
Da Silva was shot the morning of October 16 in the town of Santa Maria da
Boa Vista, and died of his wounds in a Recife hospital the following day.
He was active in regional agricultural advocacy, and was a leader of the
dam-effected people's movement of the Sao Francisco River valley, Borges
reports.
On learning of the shooting of Da Silva, Glenn Switkes, Director, Latin
America Program, of the International Rivers Network said, "Political
action for Fulgencio was not merely an ideological question, but also a
question of honor. And, uniting honor and the rationality of political
action, he helped to construct a unique social movement - the Union Pole
of the Lower and Middle Sao Francisco - which defied and continues to defy
local powerbrokers, drug traffickers, the Brazilian government and the
World Bank.
Wigold Schaeffer and Miriam Prochnow are widely acknowledged leaders of
Brazil's environmental movement. They live with their two young children
in a remote rainforest region, in the Vale do Itajai, forty miles outside of
Rio do Sul, the nearest city. The current persistent, anonymous death
threats are coming from unidentified parties. This has been going on since
last year, but it has increased in the last few days to the point that it
has made it impossible for them to carry on with their lives and normal
activities.
They have a long record of dedication and achievement in the struggle to
protect the environment in Brazil, and are widely acknowledged as two of
the most important leaders of the environmental movement in the country,
Borges says. The organization they have built with great personal and
family sacrifice, over the last ten years, APREMAVI, is an example and a
source of inspiration for the community and civil society at large.
APREMAVI has recently been awarded the Kanitz Prize for being one of the
most efficient non-profit organizations in Brazil.
Their campaign work opposing logging in Brazil's Atlantic rainforest, as
well as against industrial pig farmers and tobacco growers, has earned the
two some powerful enemies. After testifying at a recent hearing on pig
production, they received several threats of bodily harm.
Schaeffer and Prochnow have worked in concert with Rainforest Action
Network's (RAN) Brazil Program, and received funding from RAN's
Protect-An-Acre program last year for their work in promoting sustainable
forestry practices in the Atlantic rainforest region. They have
distributed thousands of seedling of native trees to be reintroduced in local
farm
lands.
Loggers, farmers and their political representatives are now stepping up
the campaign to topple legal mechanisms that have been preventing the
destruction of the last remnants of what used to be one of the largest
rainforests of the world a few decades ago - Brazil's Atlantic rainforest,
the Mata Atlantica.
Schaeffer and Prochnow have been effective at preventing loggers from
destroying what remains of the Mata Atlantica Rainforest in the State of
Santa Catarina. Their success is due to federal laws and regulations which
their group, APREMAVI, is greatly responsible for bringing into being.
APREMAVI plays a crucial role monitoring the forest reserves and
embarrassing the authorities into abiding by the laws.
Tobacco growers are very annoyed with Schaeffer and Prochnow because they
cannot expand their cultivated area and cash crop production. Real state
developers are frustrated as they are not being allowed to expand their
operations into forest covered areas - also on account of the laws
APREMAVI helped to pass.
APREMAVI has been denouncing the State of Santa Catarina government and
some of its agencies for neglecting their duties or of connivence with
unlawful environmental behavior. In response, the state Secretaries of the
Environment and Agriculture have been making negative statements against
APREMAVI in the last few days.
U.S. activists are very concerned because environmentally related murder
in Brazil has happened before last week's murder of Fulgencio Manuel da
Silva. Chico Mendes was killed ten years ago in Acre in the Amazon Region, and
more recently, environmentalist Paulo Vinhas was killed in Espirito Santo.
"Around the world, dedicated, passionate and effective people who are
standing up for human rights are being hunted down and killed," said
Borges. "The governments that refuse to intercede are responsible for
murder - they must not let these crimes go unpunished."
The activists have mounted an international fax campaign to reach
Brazilian embassies around the world with a plea to ensure Schaeffer and
Prochnow's
freedom from terroristic threats.
Brazil's President Fernando Henrique Cardoso can be reached at his office
by fax at: 61-224-0289.