With information from mst.org.br
Next Thursday (2), the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST) and friends will carry out an act to demand justice for the murder of Landless peasant Antônio Tavares and other rural workers who were murdered in the fight against latifundia and for agrarian reform. The mobilization will be on BR-277 – Km 108, Campo Largo (PR), where the Antônio Tavares monument is located, designed by architect Oscar Niemeyer. It was on that stretch of road that the Military Police murdered the peasant and injured more than 200 MST activists, including women, children and elderly people, in the year 2000.
After 24 years of impunity, this time the mobilization will be for the implementation of the sentence of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, announced on March 14th of this year. It condemns the Brazilian State for the intense violence and lack of justice in the case, determines the protection of the monument, compensation and psychological support for Tavares’ family members and victims, publicizing the decision, among other important measures so that cases like this do not happen again.
Last Thursday (25), activists from the MST and the organizations Terra de Direito e Justiça Global met with interlocutors from the Ministry of Human Rights (MDHC). The objective was to begin planning for the State to fulfill the sentence for the death of Antônio Tavares and all the violence committed on May 2, 2000. The state has 12 months to comply with the body’s sentence.
“From now on we will intensify a set of activities, which begins with this act on May 2nd, to give visibility to the sentence and demand its implementation”, explained Roberto Baggio, member of the MST national leadership for Paraná, who participated of the meeting in Brasilia.
For Darci Frigo, coordinating the organization Terra de Direito, the act takes on new meaning following the Court’s decision. “The demonstration this year demands that the sentence be in fact carried out by the Brazilian State and, mainly, by the state of Paraná, the place where public and security agents violated the lives of peasant Tavares and more than 200 protesters.”
Remember the case
Antônio Tavares Pereira was murdered on May 2, 2000, when more than 1,500 MST members headed to the capital of Paraná to participate in the March for Agrarian Reform, in celebration of Workers’ Day. Under the command of the governor at the time, Jaime Lerner (former DEM), without any court order, the Military Police of Paraná, organized into a troop of 1,500 agents, blocked BR-277 and prevented – with bullets – the arrival of the delegation of 50 bus to Curitiba and violently repressed the protesters. In addition to Tavares’ murder, more than 200 rural workers were injured.
In total, 185 people were injured during the repression of the MST delegation / Photo: Archive / APP-Sindicato
At KM 108, due to a blockade made by the Military Police, passengers got off one of the buses, when PM’s fired shots at rural workers, killing Antônio Tavares and injuring more than 200 people. It is worth noting that the Military Police did not provide assistance to the victims.
Photo: Archive / APP-Sindicato
Antônio Tavares was 38 years old when he was murdered, leaving behind a wife and five children. He was a settler of agrarian reform in the municipality of Candói and was part of the city’s Rural Workers Union.
Antônio Tavares / Photo: family archive
In the MST’s assessment, the attack on the march was not an isolated case. The repression, the movement points out, is inserted in a context of intense criminalization and persecution of social movements fighting for land in Paraná, endorsed by the then governor Jaime Lerner. Between 1994 and 2002, Lerner’s first and second terms, there were 502 arrests of rural workers, 324 bodily injuries, 07 workers victims of torture, 47 threatened with death, 31 attempted murders, 16 murders, 134 violent evictions in Paraná .
Workers got off the buses and were searched by the PM / Photo: archive / APP-Sindicato
Editing: Lucas Botelho
