by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Apr 2, 2012 | Prostitution, Rape Culture
By Amnesty International
The acquittal by Brazil’s Supreme Court of a man accused of raping three 12-year-old girls on the basis that they were allegedly “sex-workers” is an outrageous affront to the most basic human rights and it has no place in Brazil today, said Amnesty International.
The decision confirmed earlier rulings by state-level courts in Sao Paulo, where the original report was filed. The defence claimed the three girls were “sex workers” and therefore had consented.
Under Brazil’s 2009 Penal Code, sexual intercourse with an individual under 14 years of age is criminalised under any circumstance.
“Rape is never the fault of the victim. This shocking ruling effectively gives a green light to rapists and if it prevails could dissuade other survivors of sexual abuse from reporting these crimes,” said Atila Roque, Executive Director at Amnesty International in Brazil.
“It is of extreme concern that the protections provided by Brazil’s legislation in cases such as these have not been implemented.
“Amnesty International welcomes the news that the government is calling for the case to be appealed. Brazilian justice must ensure the full protection of victims of this heinous crime and that those responsible are brought to justice. Rape is a grave human rights violation in all circumstances.”
From Amnesty International: http://amnesty.org/en/news/brazil-outrageous-supreme-court-ruling-gives-green-light-rapists-2012-04-02
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Mar 23, 2012 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Colonialism & Conquest, Indigenous Autonomy
By Philip Fearnside / National Institute for Research in the Amazon
Brazil’s Belo Monte Dam on the Xingu River is now under construction despite its many controversies. The Brazilian government has launched an unprecedented drive to dam the Amazon’s tributaries, and Belo Monte is the spearhead for its efforts. Brazil’s 2011-2020 energy-expansion plan calls for building 48 additional large dams, of which 30 would be in the country’s Legal Amazon region. Building 30 dams in 10 years means an average rate of one dam every four months in Brazilian Amazonia through 2020. Of course, the clock doesn’t stop in 2020, and the total number of planned dams in Brazilian Amazonia exceeds 60.
The Belo Monte Dam itself has substantial impacts. It is unusual in not having its main powerhouse located at the foot of the dam, where it would allow the water emerging from the turbines to continue flowing in the river below the dam. Instead, most of the river’s flow will be detoured from the main reservoir through a series of canals interlinking five dammed tributary streams, leaving the “Big Bend” of the Xingu River below the dam with only a tiny fraction of its normal annual flow.
What is known as the “dry stretch” of 100 km between the dam and the main powerhouse includes two indigenous reserves, plus a population of traditional Amazonian riverside dwellers. Since the impact on these people is not the normal one of being flooded by a reservoir, they were not classified as “directly impacted” in the environmental study and have not had the consultations and compensations to which directly impacted people are entitled. The human rights commission of the Organization of American States (OAS) considered the lack of consultation with the indigenous people a violation of the international accords to which Brazil is a signatory, and Brazil retaliated by cutting off its dues payments to the OAS. The dam will also have more familiar impacts by flooding about one fourth of the city of Altamira, as well as the populated rural areas that will be flooded by the reservoir.What is most extraordinary is the project’s potential impact on vast areas of indigenous land and tropical rainforest upstream of the reservoir, but the environmental impact studies and licensing have been conducted in such a way as to avoid any consideration of these impacts. The original plan for the Xingu River called for five additional dams upstream of Belo Monte. These dams, especially the 6,140 square kilometer Babaquara Dam (now renamed the “Altamira” Dam), would store water that could be released during the Xingu River’s low-flow period to keep the turbines at Belo Monte running.The Xingu has a large annual oscillation in water flow, with as much as 60 times more water in the high-flow as compared to the low-flow period. During the low-flow period the unregulated flow of the river is insufficient to turn even one of the turbines in Belo Monte’s 11,000 MW main powerhouse. Since the Belo Monte Dam itself will be essentially ‘run-of-the-river’, without storing water in its relatively small reservoir, economic analysis suggests that the dam by itself won’t be economically viable.
The official scenario for the Xingu River changed in July 2008 when Brazil’s National Council for Energy Policy (CNPE) declared that Belo Monte would be the only dam on the Xingu River. However, the council is free to reverse this decision at any time. Top electrical officials considered the CNPE decision a political move that is technically irrational. Brazil’s current president blocked creation of an extractive reserve upstream of Belo Monte on the grounds that it would hamper building “dams in addition to Belo Monte”. The fact that the Brazilian government and various companies are willing to invest large sums in Belo Monte may be an indication that they do not expect history to follow the official scenario of only one dam.
In addition to their impacts on tropical forests and indigenous peoples, these dams would make the Xingu a source of greenhouse-gas emissions, especially methane (CH4) which forms when dead plants decay on the bottom of a reservoir where the water contains no oxygen. The Babaquara Dam’s 23m vertical variation in water level, annually exposing and flooding a 3,580 square kilometer drawdown zone would make the complex a virtual ‘methane factory’. The reservoir’s flooding of soft vegetation growing in the drawdown zone converts carbon from CO2 removed from the atmosphere by photosynthesis into CH4, with a much higher impact on global warming.
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Mar 9, 2012 | Colonialism & Conquest, Indigenous Autonomy, Mining & Drilling, NEWS
Editor’s note: Just another example of the colonial reality of civilization. Because it is unsustainable it must plunder the lands of those less powerful in its pursuit of growth. This is doubly bad when the people on those lands are living sustainably. The following article is an example of just that.
By Survival International
Yanomami shaman and spokesman Davi Kopenawa warned the UN in Geneva this week of the dangers illegal gold mining is bringing to his people.
Davi stated that thousands of illegal miners are currently working in the Yanomami territory, destroying the rainforest, polluting rivers and putting the Indians’ lives at risk. The uncontacted Yanomami are particularly vulnerable.
The Yanomami are lobbying the Brazilian authorities to evict the miners. Despite the Indians holding protests and attending meetings, the authorities have taken no action.
Davi also spoke out against a controversial bill which, if passed, would allow large-scale mining in indigenous territories. Interviewed in Switzerland, he warned that it ‘will not bring any benefit to the Indians’, rather would lead to ‘land devastation, river pollution, and even more diseases’.
2012 marks the 20th anniversary of the creation of the Yanomami territory in Brazil, which was set up for the Indians’ exclusive use.
It is the Brazilian authorities’ responsibility to protect the land, and to evict the miners and prevent future invasions.
However, Davi said, ‘The majority of politicians want to exploit the land, so they don’t listen to the indigenous people’.
Davi traveled to Geneva for its International Film Festival and Forum on Human Rights, where filmmaker Daniel Schweizer’s documentary on indigenous rights, ‘Indiens en Sursis’, was screened.
His visit was supported by various NGOs, including the World Organization Against Torture, Hutukara Yanomami Association, Instituto Socioambiental, doCip and Survival International.
From Survival International: http://www.survivalinternational.org/news/8160
Photo by Jingming Pan on Unsplash
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Feb 17, 2012 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Lobbying
By Mongabay
Federal public prosecutors in Brazil have challenged a plan to strip protected status from 86,288 hectares of land to make way for five new dams, reports International Rivers. The challenge is set to be heard by Brazil’s Supreme Court, according to the group, which is campaigning against new hydroelectric projects in environmentally-sensitive areas.
The prosecutors, known as the Ministério Publico Federal (MPF), filed a complaint against Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff on the grounds that eliminating the protected areas violates Brazil’s Constitution and its environmental legislation. The lead prosecutor, Roberto Monteiro Gurgel Santos, said that the hydroelectric projects lack requisite environmental impact studies.
São Luiz do Tapajós and Jatobá, a pair of dams on the Tapajós river, would affect 75,000 hectares alone, including 17,800 hectares in the Amazonia National Park, 36,158 ha in the Itaituba 1 and Itaituba 2 National Forests, 856 ha in Crepori National Forest, and 19,916 hectares ha in the Tapajos Environmental Protection Area. Meanwhile 8,470 hectares would be excluded from the Mapinguari National Park for the Jirau and Santo Antônio dams on the Madeira River, and 2,188 acres would be excised from the Campos Amazônicos National Park for the Tabajara dam on the Machado River.
The order to reduce the extent of the protected areas is in question. The Rousseff Administration says the move was proposed by ICMBio, the federal environmental agency, but International Rivers says internal memos from the local staff of ICMBio “expressed direct opposition to the proposal”.
“According to them, the reduction of protected areas, in the absence of socio-economic and environmental assessments of impacts and risks, is likely to cause tremendous damage to the region’s biodiversity, including endemic and endangered species, and to the livelihoods of local populations,” said International Rivers in a statement.
Brazil is in the midst of a dam-building spree in the Amazon — some 60 hydroelectric projects are planned for the region, including the massive Belo Monte dam on the Xingu river. Brazilian construction firms are also actively pursuing projects on Amazon tributaries in neighboring countries, including Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador.
Brazil says the dams represent a source of clean, renewable energy, but critics maintain the dams displace local people, disrupt fisheries, and flood large tracts of forest, contributing greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Feb 13, 2012 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Repression at Home
By Tom Phillips / The Guardian
A single shot to the temple was Mouth Organ John’s reward for spilling the beans. His friend, Junior José Guerra, fared only marginally better.
Guerra’s prize for speaking out against the illegal loggers laying waste to the greatest tropical rainforest on Earth? A broken home, two petrified children and an uncertain exile from a life he had spent years building in the Brazilian Amazon.
“I can’t go back,” said Guerra, one of the Amazon’s newest environmental refugees, three months after his friend’s brutal murder forced him, his wife and his two children into hiding. “We’ve been told that they are trying to find out where I am. The situation is very complicated.”
Mouth Organ John, 55, and Guerra, 38, lived along the BR-163, a remote and treacherous highway that cuts from north to south through the Amazon state of Para. They were migrants from Brazil’s south who came in search of a better life.
Neither man was a card-carrying environmentalist and both had reportedly been previously involved with environmental crimes. Still, they opted to commit something widely considered a cardinal sin in this isolated corner of Brazil – they informed on criminals allegedly making millions from the illegal harvesting of ipê trees from conservation units in a corner of the Amazon known as the Terra do Meio, or Middle Land.
In a region often compared to the Wild West, betraying those pillaging the rainforest all too often leads to a coffin or to exile.
Mouth Organ John, an amateur musician and mechanic whose real name was João Chupel Primo, met his fate first.
Last October, he and Guerra handed the authorities a dossier outlining the alleged activities of illegal loggers and land-grabbers in the region. Within days two men appeared at Primo’s workshop in the city of Itaituba and shot him dead. A bloody photograph of his corpse, laid out on a mortician’s slab, made a local tabloid. “There are signs this was an execution,” the local police chief, José Dias, told the paper.
Guerra escaped death, but he too lost his life. Told of his friend’s murder, he locked himself indoors, clutching a shotgun to ward off the gunmen. The next day, he was spirited out of town by federal police. Since then Guerra has embarked on a lonely pilgrimage across Brazil, journeying thousands of miles in search of support and safety. He became the latest Amazonian exile – people forced into self-imposed hiding or police protection because of their stance against those destroying the environment.
“They will order the murder of anyone who reports them [to authorities],” Guerra said this week over a crackly phone line from his latest hideout. “We thought that … if we reported these crimes they [the government] would do something … But actually João was murdered as a result.”
In June Brazil will host the Rio+20 United Nations conference on sustainable development. World leaders will gather in Rio to debate how to reconcile economic development with environmental conservation and social inclusion.
Brazil will be able to trumpet advances in its battle against deforestation – in December the government claimed Amazon destruction had fallen to its lowest level in 23 years. But the continuing threats to environmental activists represent a major blot on its environment credentials.
“What is at stake … is the government’s ability to protect its forests and its people,” said Eliane Brum, a Brazilian journalist who has won numerous awards for her dispatches from the Amazon. “If nothing is done … the government will be demoralised on the eve of Rio+20.”
Guerra is far from the first person to be forced into exile for opposing the destruction. According to government figures 49 “human rights defenders” are currently under protection in Para state, while another 36 witnesses are also receiving protection.
Last year, after the high-profile murders of Amazon activists José Cláudio Ribeiro da Silva and Maria do Espirito Santo, two local families were flown into hiding and given new identities in a distant corner of Brazil. Like Primo and Guerra, they knew too much.
In the neighbouring state of Amazonas, where activists say nearly 50 people run an imminent risk of assassination, rural leader Nilcilene Miguel de Lima was forced to flee her home. “The gunmen and the killers are the ones who should be in prison, but it’s me who is under arrest,” she told the O Eco website after an attempt on her life drove her into exile.
José Batista Gonçalves Afonso, a veteran Amazon human rights lawyer, said he had seen “countless” families forced into exile for fear of being assassinated. He blamed the situation on “the state’s inefficiency in investigating threats and providing security”.
Read more from The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/feb/12/brazil-amazon-rainforest-activists-murder
