MST-Goiás statement on the policy of harassment against fighters for agrarian reform

(Brazil, June 2, 2016) The MST in Goiás state is publicly denouncing the escalation of repression against the struggle for land. On Monday May 30, the intellectual and activist for agrarian reform Jose Valdir Misnerovicz who was in Veranópolis, in Rio Grande do Sul, was surprised by a coordinated operation by the Civil Police of Rio Grande do Sul and Goiás for his arrest. This fact is in addition to the imprisonment of the landless worker Luiz Batista Borges who is a prisoner in the Provisional Detention Center in Rio Verde since April 14, a target of the same process that seeks to criminalize  the MST, framing it as a criminal organization based in law 12.850 / 2013.

We accuse the judiciary and the police of Goiás of carrying out a clear political persecution against the just popular struggle for agrarian reform. The attempt of the reactionary forces of the state, joined also by Senators Eunício Oliveira (PMDB / EC), Ronaldo Caiado (DEM / GO), the Public Security Secretary of Goiás, José Elinton Junior and part of Goiás judiciary is to make the struggle for land in the state illegal. We understand these facts as a movement of conservative forces triggered by the federal coup, ushering in a new period of repression and criminalization against serious popular movements.

However we affirm that these actions will fail! Organizations, movements, groups, lawyers and progressive intellectuals have expressed profound solidarity against this offensive of by the owners of the large estates and agribusiness. The landless families will not retreat even one step. Instead, they will continue the struggle against the concentration of land and for social justice in Goiás.

We will resist! We will defeat the oppressive forces!

Struggle, build People’s Agrarian Reform!

State leadership of the MST-Goiás