by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Nov 13, 2012 | Indigenous Autonomy, Property & Material Destruction, Reclamation & Expropriation, Worker Exploitation
By Agence France-Presse
Work on Brazil’s controversial $13 billion Belo Monte mega-dam ground to a halt Monday after protesters torched buildings at three dam construction sites over the weekend, the developer said.
Saturday, “a group of 30 people set fire to prefab structures at the Pimental site. They went into the cafeteria, destroyed everything and robbed the till” before setting it ablaze, said Fernando Santana, spokesman for builders Consorcio Constructor Belo Monte (CCBM).
And late Sunday, groups of 20 people set structures ablaze at Canais and Diques, two other dam construction sites, said Santana.
“On Monday, as a precautionary security measure, all activities were suspended at the construction site,” said Santana, suggesting that “vandals” might be trying to derail salary renegotiation under way.
The state-owned Norte Energia hired CCBM to build the dam, which is set to be the world’s third largest when it has been completed. Between 12,000 and 13,000 workers would be employed at the site on two shifts, Santana said.
The incidents broke out after CCBM proposed a seven percent wage hike to the workers in an area where the inflation rate is at 30 percent, said Xingu Vivo, a non-governmental group opposing the dam.
On October 9 protesters — 150 natives and local fishermen — interrupted dam construction, accusing Norte Energia of backtracking on accords signed in June when people occupied the Pimental area for three weeks.
Indigenous groups fear the dam across the Xingu River, a tributary of the Amazon, will harm their way of life. Environmentalists have warned of deforestation, greenhouse gas emissions and irreparable damage to the ecosystem.
The dam is expected to flood some 500 square kilometers (200 square miles) along the Xingu and displace 16,000 people, according to the government, although some NGOs put the number at 40,000 displaced.
The natives want their lands demarcated and non-indigenous people removed from them, as well as a better healthcare system and access to drinking water.
Expected to produce 11,000 megawatts of electricity, the dam would be the third biggest in the world, after China’s Three Gorges facility and Brazil’s Itaipu Dam in the south.
It is one of several hydroelectric projects billed by Brazil as providing clean energy for a fast-growing economy.
“Avatar” director James Cameron and actress Sigourney Weaver support dam opponents, drawing parallels with the natives-versus-exploiters storyline of their blockbuster Hollywood movie.
From Bangkok Post: http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/world/320956/trouble-at-brazil-mega-dam-stops-construction-for-now
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Aug 13, 2012 | Colonialism & Conquest, Indigenous Autonomy, Reclamation & Expropriation
By Survival
More than 50 gunmen have launched a full-scale attack on an Indian community in southwest Brazil, shooting, threatening and then reportedly kidnapping one of their leaders.
The violence began on Friday, shortly after the Guarani community reoccupied part of its ancestral land, which is now occupied by ranchers.
A Guarani spokesman described how 50 gunmen surrounded around 400 Indians, firing shots at them, whilst laughing and shouting, ‘You Indians! Today, not one of you Indians will get out of here alive!’
He says hundreds of shots were fired at the Guarani men, women and children, who fled into the forest to try to escape injury.
The Guarani say that one of their leaders, a man in his fifties, was taken by gunmen and put into a car. He has not been seen since but the burnt remains of some of his clothes have been discovered.
The shooting stopped hours later, when a police vehicle arrived at the scene. No arrests have been made.
The Guarani of Arroio Korá community have been living in makeshift roadside camps, and in overcrowded reserves, while they wait for the government to map out their land and return it to them.
Unable to further endure the appalling living conditions in the camps and reserves, the Guarani decided to march back to their ancestral land on Friday, after two days of traditional prayer and rituals.
A community member said on Saturday, ‘We are surrounded by gunmen. They could attack us again. They could kill us all!’
Last November, Guarani leader Nísio Gomes was shot dead by gunmen when his community reoccupied some of its land. They drove off with his body, which has yet to be found. Eighteen men have been arrested in connection with his murder.
The Guarani at Arroio Korá remain fearful but resolute, saying, ‘We will not be silenced in the face of the assassinations… and the violations of our indigenous and human rights’.
From Survival International: http://www.survivalinternational.org/news/8581
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Apr 28, 2012 | Human Supremacy, Reclamation & Expropriation
By Giornale Di Brescia
They broke through or climbed over the gate networks. They made their way inside the farm and opened the cages, taking away puppies, pregnant mothers, and all the little beagle puppies they could find. It was a raid organized by Occupy Green Hill to demand the closure of the mill.
The procession started at the parking lot of PalaGeorge, and was attended by about 1000 people from all over North Italy and also from the center. By way of the action Sepentone deflected, and instead of going towards Via San Zeno, the main road leading farm where he was deployed the cordon of police, groups of protesters cut through the fields and the lanes, coming close to the fences.
From then on, the situation has become confused with groups of demonstrators who tried to open gates in the perimeter and teams of mobile riot police and police deployed to contain them. On the side of the gates, however, the protesters opened a breach in the fence and broke into the farm, going into the sheds and taking away at least thirty dogs.
By the end of the day, police had arrested 12 people from the local police station Montichiari, and transferred them to Desenzano. Some protesters said they had suffered violence by officials.
Green Hill 2001 is a company located in Montichiari (Brescia), which breeds beagle dogs to vivisection labs. From this farm, more than 250 dogs each month end in the enclosures, in the hands of vivisectors and on operating tables. Dogs there are born to die and sentenced to suffer.
After the collapse of the other Italian breeder of laboratory beagle dogs, the Morini Stefano di San Polo d’Enza, it is likely that Green Hill has had a greater demand, expanding and becoming one of the main breeding dogs in the European market research animals.
Inside the Green Hill 5 huts are locked up to 2500 adult dogs, plus several litters. A lager made of animal shelters closed, aseptic, without open spaces without natural light or air. Rows and rows of cages with artificial lighting and ventilation system are the environment in which these dogs develop before being loaded onto a truck and shipped to hellish laboratories.
Among the clients of Green Hill, there are university laboratories, pharmaceutical companies and renowned trial centers as the notorious Huntingdon Life Sciences in England, the largest animal torture laboratory in Europe.
Who derives profit from this pain?
For some years now Green Hill was acquired by an American firm called Marshall Farms Inc. Marshall is a name infamous throughout the world as it is the largest “factory” dog lab in existence. The Marshall beagle is actually a standard variety.
Marshall’s dogs are shipped by air all over the world, but with the purchase of Green Hill as the European headquarters and the construction of a huge farm in China, Marshall is pursuing a plan of expansion and market monopoly.
In this it must also be seen that the expansion project includes the construction of other shelters in Montichiari, which would provide Green Hill with 5,000 dogs, making it the largest beagle dog breeder in Europe.
For a price from $600 to $1200 you can buy dogs of all ages. Those willing to pay more can also buy a pregnant mother.
Green Hill Farm and Marshall also offer its customers surgical treatments on demand, including the cutting or removal of the vocal cords.
For Green Hill and Marshall Farm animals are just merchandise, objects to breed and sell, without the slightest scruple about pain and suffering – mental and physical – that they will suffer.
From Negotiation is Over!
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Apr 24, 2012 | Building Alternatives, Reclamation & Expropriation
By Jeff Conant / AlterNet
Invoking the spirit of international peasant farmer movements La Via Campesina and Brazil’s Movimento Sem Terra, hundreds of people entered a five-acre plot of land at the Berkeley/Albany border on Sunday April 22, in one of this spring’s first high-profile actions of the Occupy movement. Their goal? To farm the land and share the food with the local community.
Under the banner “Occupy the Farm,” a coalition of local residents, farmers, students, researchers, and activists broke the lock and entered the UC Berkeley-owned Gill Tract on a sunny Sunday afternoon, bringing with them over 15,000 seedlings, a pair of rototillers and a half-dozen chickens in mobile chicken-tractors. Hundreds of people, including a dozen or so children, went to work clearing weeds, tilling garden beds, filling holes with compost, and planting seedlings. At the end of four hours, they’d planted an estimated three-quarters of an acre.
After last fall’s burst of Occupy actions raised a challenge to corporate control writ large, organizers of Occupy the Farm say they are kicking off the spring season with efforts to reclaim land not just as a way of occupying space, but to meet the needs of communities through food production.
The group’s press release, which garnered significant media attention and brought several TV crews out to film the rebel farmers, said, “Occupy the Farm seeks to address structural problems with health and inequalities in the Bay Area that stem from communities’ lack of access to food and land. Today’s action reclaims the Gill Tract to demonstrate and exercise the peoples’ right to use public space for the public good. This farm will serve as a hub for urban agriculture, a healthy and affordable food source for Bay Area residents and an educational center.”
The Gill Tract, an agricultural research plot owned by UC Berkeley, is the last five acres of Class 1 soil in the East Bay. Generations of UC researchers have farmed here; now UCB Capital Projects, which holds the title to the land, has slated it for rezoning in 2013. Ironically, the activists say the company most likely to buy it up for development is Whole Foods Corporation. Hence the Occupiers’ slogan: “Whole food, not Whole Foods.”
The organizers say the UC-owned Gill tract is significant not only because it is the last and best agricultural land in the East Bay, but because the struggle over this land is tied to the struggle to keep the public university serving the public interest. Over the last decade, through investments by Novartis, Syngenta, BP and other corporations, the University of California has become increasingly captured by private interests, which have come to control the research agenda and the land use policy. Now, Occupy the Farm says, the public is taking it back.
Read more from AlterNet: http://www.alternet.org/food/155127/occupy_v._whole_foods_activists_take_over_land_slated_for_development_and_start_a_farm_/
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Apr 6, 2012 | Colonialism & Conquest, Indigenous Autonomy, Reclamation & Expropriation
By Maria Sanchez / Upside Down World
Tucked between sand dunes and the Pacific Ocean, perched on a small hill, is Xayakalan, home to members of the indigenous community, Santa Maria Ostula. Here, the sound of waves hitting the shore mixes with the cries of children playing among the wooden huts. Against this beautiful backdrop, a group of Mexican Nahua people are fighting to keep control of their land. The cost has been high.
Since 2009, this small community of around 3, 000 people has seen 28 of its members killed. Another four are missing. Those who dare step up to defend their indigenous rights are picked off one by one.
The Nahua people live on over 24,000 hectors of land, which they use for fishing and growing crops. They speak passionately of how the earth provides for them. Maria, not her real name, describes how she feeds her family from crops she grows outside her house. “Food is easy to come by here,” she states. “And the ocean always gives us a good meal.”
Maria and her community, unlike other groups of indigenous people, have maintained unbroken control of their land since before the arrival of the Spanish in the 16th century. The community, in the past, has been successful in keeping invaders at bay. This time, they fear they will not be so successful.
Plans by local government to develop the coastline for tourism have stirred up old rivalries in the area. A land dispute going back to the early 1900s has once again reared its head. And this time, the stakes are high. Around 1,300 hectors of unspoilt land running from the coast up into the mountains is being targeted for development.
The Nahua people say that their community owns the rights to the land and have the legal papers to prove it. This claim is disputed by a group of local businessmen, who say the land was privatized in 1911 and that it belongs to them.
To stake claim to this uninhabited stretch of coastline, local businessmen from the nearby town, La Placita, moved onto the land in early June 2009. One man in his fifties, who declined to give his name, explained how the businessmen started giving away plots of land to those willing to join them in the fight against the Ostulan community. “They started building houses,” he stated. “They planted crops. Just like the local politicians they wanted to develop the land for tourism.”
People from Ostula asked local government to intervene on their behalf. Their appeals were ignored. Some in the Nahua community believe that local government is involved. “The government was in agreement with those on the land,” states one woman. Others nod in agreement, but are reluctant to say so out loud.
Towards the middle of June 2009, the community, tired of standing by while others occupied their land, decided to take action. The Nahua called a regional indigenous meeting, which was attended by neighboring indigenous communities. “At the assembly it was decided that we would fight for what is ours,” said Juan, not his real name. Juan explained how around 60 members of Ostula took back the 1,300 hectors that had been taken from them. “They greeted us with gun shots,” he said. “But through sheer number of people we managed to overcome them and drive them out.”
To protect the stretch of beach from further development, around 40 Nahua families set up home in the dunes. What started out as a strong movement in defense of their land has dwindled significantly today, with less than 15 families remaining. People are reluctant to explain why this has happened. And considering the daily threat of violence this is not surprising.
In October of last year, Pedro Leiva Dominguez, spokesperson for the community and member of the Mexican peace movement, was shot dead in Xayakalan. Nobody there is prepared to talk about his murder and who was involved.
“It was a family problem,” a man in his late fifties said.
“It was over an argument,” said one woman.
Pedro was not the first to lose his life defending his community and he would not be the last.
Since driving the local businessmen from the land, the community of Ostula has been constantly under threat of attack by the local drug cartel. This situation is further complicated by the presence of paramilitary groups operating in the area alongside organized crime.
The community is isolated and increasing vulnerable. Those who step up to protect the community do so at their own risk. Many of those who have been killed or kidnapped were the pillar stones of the Ostulan community, without them, the others fear that their movement will fail.
Just before Christmas, the community lost one more member. Don Trino, head of the community police, was abducted while traveling with members of the Mexican Peace Movement, headed by Javier Sicilia. His body was found the next day. He had been shot at point blank range and his body showed signs of torture. Those who knew him talk of his dedication to the cause. Those who remain seem determined to stay, however it is yet to be seen if dedication alone will save them.
From Upside Down World: http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/3563-dying-in-defense-of-land-in-mexico
