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For more information contact: Emily S. Goldman goldman@rfkmemorial.org or (202) 463-7575 x 235

RFK Center Delegation to Observe Sister Dorothy Stang Murder Trial in Brazil

WASHINGTON, DC, 19 April 2006. – The Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights (RFK) has organized a delegation to observe the trial of the middleman (Amair Feijoli da Cunha, known as “Tato”) in the case of Sister Dorothy Stang, a 73-year-old American nun murdered in the Brazilian Amazon in 2005. The trial will be held in Belém, Pará (eastern Amazon) on 26-27 April. This will be the second trial in the case – the hired gunmen were tried on 9-10 December 2005.

Sister Dorothy Stang, a member of the Ohio Province of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, was murdered on 12 February 2005 in Anapu, Pará, Brazil. She was born in Dayton, Ohio in 1931 and entered the Sisters of Notre Dame in 1948. She professed final vows in 1956 and moved to Brazil in 1966. She was a dual citizen of the US and Brazil and lived for 39 years in Brazil working with the Pastoral Land Commission (the social justice arm of the Brazilian Catholic Church, or CPT), fighting for the rights of landless workers and for the broad implementation of a human rights-based land reform that encourages wise environmental stewardship. She helped landless workers combat the illegal appropriation of public lands common in the state of Pará and the impunity surrounding land-access cases that impedes more than a small handful from ever being brought to justice. “She became deeply involved in the struggle for land, justice, and dignity in a part of Brazil where impunity, landlessness, and deep injustice have been the rule for generations,” noted RFK Senior Program Officer Emily S. Goldman just before departing for Brazil.

Sister Dorothy’s murder came just over a week after she met with Brazil’s top human rights officials in which she detailed the credible death threats she and local landless people had received from wealthy ranchers and loggers in the region. After receiving the threats, Sister Dorothy commented, “I don’t want to flee, nor do I want to abandon the struggle of these farmers who live without any protection in the forest. They have the sacrosanct right to aspire to a better life on land where they can live and work with dignity while respecting the environment.”

The CPT reports that 1,385 rural workers, trade unionists, lawyers, and religious workers aligned with the struggle for a rights-based land reform were assassinated between 1985 and 2004. Of those 1,385, only 77 cases went to trial – resulting in the conviction of only 15 intellectual authors and 65 gunmen. In just the state of Pará, where Sister Dorothy lived and died, the CPT has registered the assassination of 772 rural workers in the context of land conflicts between 1971 and 2004. This deeply entrenched situation of land conflict and violence in Pará is directly related to the extreme concentration of land in great part due to illegal land appropriation.

The trial observation delegation will consist of three siblings of Sister Dorothy Stang and one of her nieces; three members of the Stang family legal team from Heller, Ehrman, White & McAuliffe LLP; members of Sister Dorothy’s religious order, Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur; Darci Frigo, a Brazilian lawyer who received the 2001 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award, and Emily S. Goldman of RFK.

“It is due to the long history of impunity and violence surrounding land-access that it is of the utmost importance that due process is followed in Sister Dorothy’s case. We are traveling to Brazil to bear witness and to press the Brazilian government to carry out a full investigation into all those responsible for planning and financing her murder and to implement a real land reform. We hope to see a legal precedent set at the end of all the trials associated with this case,” stated David Stang, Sister Dorothy’s youngest brother who will travel to Brazil on the delegation.

RFK is a non-profit non-governmental organization that engages in long-term partnerships with activists who win the RFK Human Rights Award, advocating for the social justice goals they champion. RFK has 36 laureates in 21 countries and employs litigation; advocacy before policy-makers; consumer awareness campaigns to foster corporate responsibility; media coverage; high-level delegations; and briefings for government and the international human rights community. RFK’s Brazil laureate is Darci Frigo, who presses for equitable land reform, promoting biodiversity conservation and sustainable agriculture, and fighting forced labor and impunity in land-access cases.