Armed attack on Brazilian Amazon community while delegate at Cop26

Witnesses say tents in forest in disputed area of Pará state set alight and residents beaten

A land defender from Pará, in the Brazilian Amazon, said armed men attacked a forest community she defends while she was at the Cop26 talks in Glasgow.

Claudelice Silva dos Santos, a Cop26 delegate and nominee for the 2019 Sakharov prize, said she had received a phone call sounding the alarm after about 30 pickup trucks arrived at the São Vinicius camp at the Tinelli farm in Nova Ixipuna, home to about 80 families, at about 3pm local time on 3 November.

Police in Marabá said they were investigating the incident. Local news reports said the workers’ union transported some of the injured to hospital, but it was not known how many people were injured.

Witnesses said many people fled as the men set fire to tents before rounding up those who could not leave, putting hoods on their heads and forcing them into a lorry where they were beaten. Some people were thrown off at the side of the road a long way from the settlement and elderly people were left tied up on anthills. Some villagers hid in the forest, while the fate of others was unclear.

One witness, who did not want to be named, said her brother had been tied up and taken away and a woman who had been left on the road had told her that “[the men] were hitting everyone a lot and my brother has a crack in his head and his mouth split open. We don’t know where they are.”

Another said: “I heard shooting and everyone started running in all directions. I saw that they were setting the camp on fire, I saw six motorcycles on fire … there were many children, elderly people just thrown in the forest.”

Dos Santos said: “This case has been going on for decades. The dispute was about to be resolved and the land given back [to the community]. This is not the first attack but people were assured there would be no more violence.

“For more than 10 years, these workers have been there, resisting for their land rights and … ranchers simply arrive here and want to kill everyone,” said Dos Santos, who fought against illegal logging with her brother, José Claudio Ribeiro dos Santos, and sister-in-law, Maria do Espírito Santo, before they were killed in the area in 2011.

Dos Santos said the attack followed a campaign of harassment by local ranchers against the São Vinicius community, who are subsistence farmers. “Police and local authorities know about the threats but have done nothing to protect the community,” she said.

She said the attack came a day after police from the Marabá municipality told the community there would be no conflict before a legal process concluded the Tinelli claim to a disputed area of about 1,690 hectares (17 sq km) on the 4,900-hectare farm (49 sq km) was illegal. That area is awaiting formal designation as a settlement for the community.

At Cop26 more than 120 countries covering more than 90% of forests endorsed a pledge on deforestation, committing to work to halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030. Brazil was among the signatories.

8 November 2021

The Guardian