A second rancher has been sentenced for his role in the murder of Dorothy Stang, an American nun who was gunned down in 2005 for her efforts on behalf of poor farmers in the Amazon rainforest, reports Reuters.
Regivaldo Galvao was sentenced to 30 years in prison by a jury in the city of Pará. Last month rancher Vitalmiro Bastos de Moura was also sentenced to 30 years in prison for hiring hitmen to kill Stang. The gumen were earlier sentenced for the crime.
Stang, a nun from Ohio who spent more than 30 years fighting for land rights for poor settlers in the Amazon, was murdered in the Brazilian state of Para in February 2005. Stang, 73, was shot six times with a revolver as she read from the Bible. Stang was working with the Pastoral Land Commission, a Catholic Church group that lobbies for land reform in Brazil and fights for land rights for the poor, when she was killed.
Stang’s murder was a tipping point in the heated battle between the rural poor and large landowners in the state of Para. The federal government responded to her killing by sending two thousand armed troops into the state. Later Brazil established several protected areas in contested forests and proposed a land-use permit system for selling concessions to loggers who agreed to set side land for settlers and indigenous groups.
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