Shacks, furniture and belongings of residents were set on fire at the São Vinícius camp, in the municipality of Nova Ipixuna, in southeastern Pará, on Wednesday (3). The place, with around 80 families, has been the target of agrarian dispute for ten years.
Residents report that 11 of them, being three elderly, were attacked and tied up for two hours by criminals. The case will be investigated by the Civil Police’s Police Station for Agrarian Conflicts.
The episode was denounced by activist Claudelice Santos, a resident of Nova Ipixuna, during COP26, the UN conference on climate change taking place in Glasgow (Scotland). She, who participates in an event in the UK, reported the episode on social media.
“It is important to have a thorough investigation into who was involved in the articulation, financing and action in the attack. We cannot admit that the agromilitia has the freedom to kill, torture and expel people who only claim constitutionally guaranteed rights,” he wrote on Instagram.
Claudelice leads the Institute Ze Claudio and Maria, an organization that takes its name in honor of a couple of agrarian reform activists who was murdered in the region in 2011. They were brother and sister her.
According to reports from residents, around 4 pm, the attackers arrived in 14 pickup trucks and a truck, already shooting at members of the camp.
Many of the men were hooded. Most of the villagers managed to escape into the woods, but 11 of them were captured, including two women and three elderly people.
Those who did not escape, according to the report of the group, were rendered over two hours face down on the ground. They received rifle butts, kicks and punches. No one was killed in action, but the attacked had to go to a local hospital to treat injuries.
The group of armed men burned tents, furniture, utensils, six motorcycles and documents belonging to the families in the camp.
“The farmers arrived attacking the camp, without giving a chance to defend themselves. It was very fast, very violent. A terror. I got hit, I lost food, kitchen utensils. Left the people with nothing. I tried to talk to some to ask them to stop , but they threw me to the ground and kicked me with the gun pointed at my face,” said Josias Teixeira, a 53-year-old farmer.
He says that he suffered a series of physical and verbal aggressions and that, after that, he was placed in a pickup truck and dropped off at an unknown point in the middle of the forest.
According to the MPF (Federal Public Ministry), the Tinelli farm, where the camp is, is superimposed on a property registered in the name of the Union. In 2002, INCRA (National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform) published concierge creation of settlement in area.
According to the CPT (Pastoral Land Commission), the process of establishing the settlement was started because the occupant farmer of the area had no right to regulate the property, having already received under another Union property and for having used the land to public speculation.
The owners of the Tinelli farm, at the time, were also accused of selling 810 hectares of the area illegally.
For the lawyer of the CPT (Pastoral Land Commission), Larissa Tavares, there is inertia on the part of Incra, because, in October, the MPF recommended the institute to grant the area for agrarian reform.
The commission calculates that between 1996 and 2019, 320 workers and leaders were murdered in Pará and another 1,213 were threatened with death due to land conflicts.
In 2014, the landless families camped at the site asking for the request to create the settlement to be put off the paper, but the Tinelli family got an injunction in favor of the immediate eviction of the group from the State Court of Pará.
Josias Teixeira says that the camp will continue, but now close to the farm. “We are going to wait for the court’s decision. We are living with food difficulties. We live off extractivism and do something like that. There is no justification. Our region is marked by violence, but we are not going to stop fighting,” he says.
The Tinelli farm was acquired in 1980 by Abílio Tinelli and in 1987 entered the definitive titling process, says Thiellis Tinelli, Abílio’s grandson and the farm’s lawyer.
“It so happens that, due to the delay in obtaining title to the Farm, in 2002 the São Vinícius Camp was created, where the landless maintain their right of ownership. The fact is that the farm has been in the process of being titled for more than three decades,” he says.
Tinelli also claims that the campers began to live on the attached farm Dois Corações in 2019, this one with definitive title. Residents of the São Vinicius camp claim they are not sure of the exact location of the land whose title was recommended by the MPF to Incra, which may have caused confusion.
According to the lawyer, the armed men were not sent farmers. Tinelli says it was just a group of residents of the city that was moved after an alleged attack of armed camped against the farm and therefore called for the withdrawal of the camping site voluntarily.
“Despite what is absurdly spread by the media, there was no murder, injury or the like, there was only request for withdrawal of the invaders who came out the same day,” said the lawyer.
In a statement, the Regional Superintendence of Incra Sul do Pará says that it only received notification from the MPF last Wednesday. “The situation of the aforementioned rural property is being carefully analyzed by the technical staff for a pronouncement on the matter and the adoption of appropriate measures”, says the document.
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