74-year-old American nun, who was gunned down after a long struggleagainst efforts by loggers and landowners to clear large areas of the Amazon rainforest.
Police and fellow religious workers said that two gunmen approached U.S. missionary Dorothy Stang and shot her three times in the back at a settlement of landless peasants Saturday, February 12, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) from the town of Anapu in Para state, northern Brazil.
Stang, a native of Dayton, Ohio, became known as "the angel of the Trans-Amazonian" to supporters and "the terrorist" by ranchers who opposed her, as she encouraged small farmers to hold their ground.
Anapu ranchers accused her of supplying guns to peasant farmers, news reports said. But fellow missionaries in the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur order, which has around 2,000 nuns spread across five continents, dismissed the claims as "absurd and false," the Reuters news agency reported.
She was a missionary of the Pastoral Land Commission, the Catholic Church’s arm that fights for the rights of rural workers, peasants and defends polemic land reforms. Stang had spent over three decades fighting for the rights of small farmers in Amazon land conflicts, but reportedly faced constant death threats during her work.
EARLIER DEATH THREATS
Her death came reportedly just nine days after she warned Miranda of death threats to her and local farmers.
Brazil’s Human Rights Secretary Nilmario Miranda told the Reuters news agency by phone from Anapu region that police identified the gunmen and people who hired them and ordered the killing. A rancher who threatened to expel small farmers from land is suspected of masterminding the assassination, he reportedly added.
"Everything indicates this, the gunmen’s links, the history of (killing) contracts around here. It’s just a legal question, you can’t give out a name without definitive proof against him," Miranda was quoted as saying. The Associated Press (AP) news agency reported earlier that two suspects in the case had been taken into custody.
MINISTERS AND POLICE
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula has dispatched ministers and federal police teams to investigate the killing, which has highlighted tensions between small farmers, loggers and big landowners as they lay claim to the rain forest, news reports said.
The settlement where Stang was killed is linked to a vast, state-run sustainable development project. Loggers and ranchers are encroaching on the area set aside for small farmers. Reuters citing environmental group Greenpeace said Para has Brazil’s highest rate of murders connected to land battles. They apparently accounting for over 40 percent of the 1,237 deaths nationwide between 1985 and 2001.
Stang had lived in Brazil since 1996 and reportedly worked in the region for more than 20 years as part of her efforts to safe the rainforest. "She was basically protected by her status as being an old lady and being a nun. She also recently became a Brazilian citizen, and she thought that would help but it obviously didn’t," her niece Angela Mason told AP.
(With: BosNewsLife News Center and reports from Brazil)
