Violence against Human Rights and Environmental Activists on the Rise
10/23/97
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RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:
Headline: Violence against Human Rights and Environmental Activists on the
Rise
Source: Rainforest Action Network
Date: 10/23/97
RAINFOREST ACTION NETWORK
For immediate release -- October 23, 1993
Contact -- Beto Borges: brazilpro@ran.org
VIOLENCE AGAINST HUMAN RIGHTS AND ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVISTS ON THE RISE IN
BRAZIL
Just a week after anti-dam activist Fulgencio Manuel da Silva died of
gunshot wounds in North-Eastern Brazil, the leaders of the campaign to
protect the Atlantic coastal rainforests, Wigold Schaeffer and Miriam
Prochnow, have received a vicious barrage of telephone death threats.
Da Silva was shot the morning of October 16 in the town of Santa Maria
da Boa Vista, and died of his wounds 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. In this role, he
frequently battled against the interests of local powerbrokers, drug
traffickers, 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 death threats are
coming from unidentified parties.
Their campaign work opposing logging in Brazil's Atlantic rainforest, as
well as against industrial pig farmers and tobacco growers, earned the
two some powerful enemies. After testifying at a hearing on pig
production, they received several threats of bodily harm.
Schaeffer and Prochnow have worked in concert with Rainforest Action
Network's 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.
"Around the world, dedicated, passionate and effective people who are
standing up for human rights are being hunted down and killed," said
Beto Borges, RAN's Brazil Program Director. "The governments that
refuse to intercede are responsible for murder -- they must not let
these crimes go unpunished."
Ten years ago, human rights activist Chico Mendes was murdered. The two
people convicted of this crime escaped police custody; one was
apprehended late last year, the other is still at large.
Rainforest Action Network works to protect the Earth's rainforests and
support the rights of their inhabitants through education, grassroots
organizing, and non-violent direct action.