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NEWS FROM BRAZIL supplied by SEJUP (Servico Brasileiro de Justica
e Paz)
Number 145, September 06, 1994.
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We are pleased to announce that SEJUP now has its
own conference. It is called Sejup.News; we will
continue to place our information as well in the
Ax.Agen.Eng conference until the end of September
1994. Starting in October our weekly information
will be available ONLY in the Sejup.News conference.
We invite you to visit us there.
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LAND ISSUES
- Document denounces slave labor.
A document release on August 25 in Brasilia at the end of
the "Slave Work Never Again" seminar which took place between
August 23 and 25 called for a number of government responses. The
document denounces that the Land Pastoral Commission (CPT) has
registered 129 cases of slavery involving 45650 people and that
the Indigenous Missionary Council (CIMI) during 1994 alone has
records of approximately 10 thousand indians being forced to work
in slave conditions.
The document accuses the government of omission in this area
and claims that impunity has been the chief reason that slave
labor exists or continues in Brazil. According to the document,
the government has failed to observe international agreements in
this area.
Apart from an adequate governmental infra-structure to
combat slave labor, the participants at the seminar called for a
constitutional amendment which would disappropriate (and without
compensation) the properties on which slave or forced labor
conditions are found. The people suffering such conditions should
according to the proposal be the first to be settled on such
areas. The document proposes as well that the omission of the
government be taken to international courts and that a publicity
campaign be carried out to alert public opinion in Brazil about
the existence of slave labor.
- Church workers prepare document about elections.
In a document released at the beginning of September, Church
workers with the Pastoral Land Commission (CPT) declared that "a
coherency with our faith, solidarity with those who benefited by
the work of the CPT and fidelity to our history of struggle
demands of us at the moment a conscious, clear and lucid stand in
favor of the Popular Brazilian Front and of the candidature of
Lula".
The document starts with the biblical and theological
reasons which demand such a stand. It then goes on to explain
that the election of October 03 demands a choice between two
projects for Brazil. On the side of Fernando Henrique Cardoso
according to the document, are the traditional conservative and
dominating elites including what has remained from the military
dictatorship, groups involved with corruption and political
groups such as those of impeached President Collor and the
"colonels" of the north-east. On the side of Lula are found
grassroots and progressive sectors belonging to rural and urban
social movements, to the struggle for real citizenship and for
ethics in politics.
The document states that CPT workers have some restrictions
to the Brazil Popular Front program but remembers that since the
height of the dictatorship in the mid 1970s Church workers
throughout Brazil have been on the side of rural workers and
their struggle for land, for a decent life and for full
citizenship. They see the Brazil Popular Front program as the one
which comes closest to the dreams of the oppressed and of the
Church workers who accompanied them over the years. "We are not
as christians" continues the document " naively confusing our
ideals of the construction of the Reign of God with a future
popular government which has and will have limitations...... but
to elect Lula as president represents an important step in the
construction of a Brazil which is for all where we hope it will
be possible to glimpse the Reign of God"
- The rural exodus increased during the 1980s.
The rural exodus towards the cities increased significantly
during the 1980s especially from the regions which have a more
modern agricultural system in Brazil according to a study by
Charles Muller of the State University in Campinas, Sao Paulo
(UNICAMP).
The study shows that in the 1980s, 2.6 million people left
the rural areas. Of this total, 1.9 million left areas considered
to have a more dynamic and modern agricultural system such as the
interior of the State of Sao Paulo. According to the study, the
rate of growth of the large urban centers has also stabilized.
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