Press Release – European Coordnation of Via Campesina
(Brussels, 7 Nov 2016)The European Coordination Via Campesina vehemently repudiates the action of repression carried out by the Brazilian police against activists of the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST) on Friday (4/11) in the Florestan Fernandes National School in Guararema (SP), Brazil.
These acts are the latest in a series of authoritarian and repressive measures that have targeted the MST in recent months, like the murders of two of its members by police seven months ago in the state of Paraná. These actions leave no doubt on the dictatorial and criminalization policies carried out against social movements in the country today.
The National School Florestan Fernandes is an important training space for Brazilian and foreign activists. The way the police raid was executed is intolerable and without legal basis.
We reaffirm that struggling is not a crime! And that building Popular Agrarian Reform is a right.
From the European Coordination Via Campesina we fully reject the persecution and criminalization suffered by the MST and its members and express our solidarity with this important popular movement.
