indigenous people of the rainforest

Standing alongside Brazil's rainforest peoples

CAFOD’s representative in Westminster Diocese is about to travel to Brazil’s Amazon rainforest to highlight illegal rainforest destruction and associated human rights violations. Tony Sheen, a 47-year-old from the Parish of Our Lady of Mount Carmel & St George, Enfield, will visit the state of  Pará, where CAFOD partner, the Pastoral Land Commission (CPT), an organisation of the Brazilian Bishops´ Conference, assists local people who have been threatened and intimidated. He will also join a special ‘Martyrs Pilgrimage’ at São Féliz do Araguaia, in neighbouring Mato Grosso State, on 16 July, which will include a torchlight procession in memory of murdered Jesuit priest Joao Bosco Burnier. Fr Burnier was murdered in 1976 when he and Bishop Pedro  Casaldáliga of São Felix do Araguaia visited police headquarters in a remote area to inquire about two indigenous women being detained and tortured.   Pará and Mato Grosso are states where indigenous communities and small–scale farmers have struggled to protect the forest and their livelihoods from large-scale cattle ranching and mining. Six murders have taken place in the past month in the region, amid conflicts over land and logging, adding to the 34 murders related to land violence in Brazil over the last year. “I am naturally apprehensive about visiting such a dangerous area,” says Tony, “but I feel it is important to stand alongside the poor in Brazil whose rights are often trampled upon by rich landowners”. CAFOD is supporting the Brazilian Bishops’ Conference which is alarmed about increasing forest clearances and the surge in violence against social and environmental activists. It supports their demand that proposed change to the country’s Forest Code is vetoed because it will give a green light to developers and loggers to fell more of the Amazon Rainforest and attack opponents.

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