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Brazil To Tackle Invasion By ‘Landless’ Workers

  Brazil’s right-wing government under President Jair Bolsonaro will seek to classify invasions of farmland by landless workers movements as akin to terrorism, with harsher … Continue reading Brazil To Tackle Invasion By ‘Landless’ Workers


Members of the Brazil’s Landless Movement (MST), who are protesting for change in the process of land reform, hold a flag up by burning tires on a highway in Brasilia, Brazil
Members of the Brazil’s Landless Movement (MST), who are protesting for change in the process of land reform, hold a flag up by burning tires on a highway in Brasilia, Brazil

 

Brazil’s right-wing government under President Jair Bolsonaro will seek to classify invasions of farmland by landless workers movements as akin to terrorism, with harsher penalties for perpetrators, an Agriculture Ministry official said on Monday.

Nabhan Garcia, land issues secretary at the ministry, said the government must convince the National Congress to change the law to more stringently deal with such invasions and give police broader autonomy to act against invaders.

“It is the challenge of this government to demonstrate to Congress that this is a thing very close to terrorism, or it could be said in some circumstances is terrorism, and to have a more severe application of the law,” Garcia told reporters.

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Farmers have formed a key support base that helped Bolsonaro win the presidency, with a list of producer-friendly policies are now at the center of his agenda after he assumed office Jan. 1.

Garcia founded the far-right group UDR that is militantly opposed to land invasions. His newly created secretariat of land issues consolidates previously disparate powers over rural land reform and demarcation of indigenous territory under the Agriculture Ministry.

Garcia made the remarks in response to a land invasion in the northern state of Para, the first incident under Bolsonaro’s presidency, noting that hundreds of such invasions are underway around the country.

The landless workers movement MST behind many of these invasions was a major supporter of former leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Many landless workers’ movements seek to take over properties in the name of social and economic justice to more equally distribute rural wealth, but farmers argue this flies in the face of the country’s property laws.

Garcia favors land reform initiatives already in place that redistribute land classified as “unproductive” to the rural poor. But he said laws must be respected and invasions by force would not be tolerated.

Watchdog groups say that police, often under the sway of powerful local landowners, frequently get away with bloodshed against landless activists.