American Nun Shot Dead in Brazil's Amazon
Date: 14-Feb-05
Country: BRAZIL
Author: Leonardo Pedro
Two gunmen approached US missionary Dorothy Stang and shot her three times in the back at a settlement of landless peasants, 30 miles (50 km) from the town of Anapu in the state of Para, police and fellow religious workers said.
"She had no fear; this was her life, her fight," Ze Geraldo, a ruling Workers Party (PT) federal deputy, told Reuters by telephone after helping bring her body back to Anapu, where he said she would be buried, after an autopsy.
Having shot her in the back, a gunman fired a fourth shot to her head when she fell to the ground, then fled into the jungle, according to Geraldo.
"This is the savagery of the big landowners," said the deputy, who has worked in the region for 20 years.
President Luiz Inacio Lula dispatched ministers and police teams to carry out a "rigorous" investigation.
"Two hired gunmen have now been identified and there are other people involved," Human Rights Minister Nilmario Miranda said in an interview on national television. He used the word "pistoleiro," used in Brazil to describe a contract killer.
Stang's fellow missionaries had long feared such news.
"Sister Dorothy", as she was known, was originally from Ohio. She worked with peasant families to prevent them from fleeing illegal loggers and ranchers in the Trans-Amazonian highway region, some 435 miles (700 km) southwest of state capital of Belem.
She negotiated with hired gunmen to prevent attacks on settlements, frequently reported human rights abuses and taught locals how to use the forest in a sustainable way.
"She received so many threats; I just never thought it would happen," said Sister Betsy Flynn of Stang's order, the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur.
Brazil's government compared Stang's killing to that of legendary Amazon environmental activist Chico Mendes, who was gunned down in 1988 and became a martyr in the fight to protect the world's largest rain forest and its people.
Environment Minister Marina Silva said Stang's death would intensify work to create so-called "extractavist" settlements to allow sustainable use of forest by small farmers.
Small farmers clear the jungle to expand fields. They clash with big landowners seeking to take over areas of forest for illegal logging or ranching.
Environmental group Greenpeace lashed out at state authorities for failing to heed numerous warnings from public prosecutors that Stang and others were in grave danger.
"Criminals continue to rule the Amazon, silencing those that protect its people and forests," said Paulo Adario, Greenpeace's Amazon director.
"Any person who tries to stay in areas invaded by land speculators is threatened with death," Stang said in a television interview on Feb. 3. "They are highly armed and no-one is disarming them."
The US Embassy in Brazil said, "We trust there will be a full investigation by the police."
Stang, who had lived in Brazil for more than three decades, recently won a human rights award from a Brazilian lawyers group. The state of Para named her woman of the year.
(Additional reporting by Andrew Hay in Brasilia)