Another opponent of logging in the Brazilian Amazon was gunned down in the state of Pará, reports AFP.
Joao Chupel Primo, 55, was shot and killed Saturday after receiving death threats due to his outspoken advocacy against illegal clearing of rainforests in Itaituba, a region in southeastern Pará. The Pastoral Land Commission says that Primo was shot in the head as he worked in a machine shop.
Primo became the eighth illegal logging activist killed since May in Pará and Rondonia. Few of the perpetrators have been brought to justice.
Conflict over land in the Brazilian Amazon is common. According to the Pastoral Land Commission, 383 people were killed in land conflicts between 2000 and 2010.
Tensions are especially high in the Brazilian Amazon due to high commodity prices, which boost land values and make land-grabbing — and associated deforestation — more profitable. Nevertheless deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon is expected to be below normal for the 2010-2011 year.
Murders tied to land disputes in rural Brazil, cumulative total of 383 since 2000.
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(06/16/2011) A rural worker who confronted illegal loggers operating in the Brazilian state of Pará was found murdered near his home, reports the Associated Press. Murdered on the Esperanca landless settlement, his death is likely related to ongoing conflicts between loggers and farmers in the Esperanca community. The victim, Obede Souza, is the fifth person to be murdered this month after standing up to illegal loggers.
Rash of murders threatens to silence environmental and social activism in Brazil
(06/10/2011) Authorities in Brazil have sent an elite police force consisting of 60 officers to offer protection to environmental activists in the Amazon after a series of killings, reports the Associated Press. The move comes 10 days after Brazil’s Vice President Michel Temer announced the creation of a working group on Amazon violence following the assassinations of three activists in the region in late May. The Brazilian Amazon is no stranger to systemic violence against environmental activists, yet the response from the federal government in the past two weeks is the most significant to date.
Assassinations of environmentalists continue in Brazil’s Amazon, deforestation rises
(05/28/2011) A community leader in the Brazilian Amazon was slain Friday just three days after two environmentalists were killed in a neighboring state, reports Reuters. Adelino “Dinho” Ramos, the president of the Movimento Camponeses Corumbiara e da Associação dos Camponeses do Amazonas, a small farmers association, was gunned down front of his family Friday morning in Rondônia. Brazil’s Special Secretariat for Human Rights, an office of the president, said it was unclear who killed Ramos, who had received death threats from loggers.
