he fact increases the concern of the CNBB (National Bishops Conference of Brazil) for the lives of all those who have received death threats in Pará, including three of our Bishops: Dom José Luiz Azcona, Dom Erwin Kräutler and Dom Flávio Giovenale”, write the Brazilian Bishops in a statement signed by Monsignor Luiz Soares Vieira, Archbishop of Manaus, for the CNBB presidency, expressing “ethical indignation” over the verdict issued on Tuesday by a Belém court that acquitted Vitalmiro Moura, known as ‘Bida’, the rancher accused of ordering the assassination of Sister Dorothy Stang on 12 February 2005 in Anapu, in the Amazonian State of Pará.
“We were informed that the public prosecutor will appeal the ruling, demonstrating the incompatibility of the verdict with the evidence on file”, continue the Bishops, expressing solidarity with the congregation of ‘Notre Dame de Namur’ to which Sr. Dorothy belonged, the Brazilian Conference of Religious (CRB) that created the Dorothy Stang Committee and the prelature of Xingu, in hope that “this outcome does not discourage the battle in
favor of truth and justice”.
“We express all our encouragement to the work of the communities of Anapu that are continuing the mission
of Irmã Dorothy, denouncing land and environmental crimes and announcing hope that doesn’t betray. Blessed are the peacemakers – they conclude – Blessed are they that suffer persecution for justice’ sake, Jesus Christ teaches us”.
Also President Luiz Ignácio Lula da Silva expressed “outrage” at the verdict: “As a Brazilian, as a common citizen, I'm obviously outraged with the result, though as President I cannot not give hunches on a court decision. We have to wait until the lawyers make the appeals to see what happens”, said Lula yesterday to the press in Brasilia after launching a new sustainable development project in the Amazon, among the initiative personally supported by Sr. Dorothy.
This outcome does not discourage the battle in favor of truth and justice
“I think this testifies a little against Brazil’s image abroad and makes part of the society start to have doubts about the trial”, added Lula.
“Sister Dorothy was persecuted in life and now was insulted in death”, said the prosecutor Edson Souza after the reading of the verdict, in which a jury of Belém, in the Amazon State of Pará, acquitted Vitalmiro Moura, known as ‘Bida’, the ‘fazendeiro’ (rancher) sentenced in a first trial to 30 years in prison for ordering the assassination of Sr. Dorothy Stang.
“It is easy to convict the killer, a poor man, and acquit the rancher, who has a lot more power”, said Luiza Virginia Moraes, chairwoman of the Dorothy Stang Committee. The prosecutor Souza said he will appeal ‘Bida’s’ acquittal. Rayfran das Neves Sales, the confessed killer of the nun, in the retrial recanted earlier testimony clearing the rancher: in contradiction with 13 previous depositions, Sales claimed that he acted alone and was sentenced to 28 years in prison for “murder”, but denied he was commissioned.
In a strange coincidence, MISNA sources contacted in Belém reveal that the ruling was issued in the same hours in which three Bishops and a priest that had received death threats denounced before the ‘Commission for the Amazon’ of the Brazilian House of Representatives the existence of a “criminal consortium” in the Amazon State, already infamously known for human rights violations against the indigenous and Sem Terra (landless rural farm-workers).
“Anyone who takes a stand alongside the marginalized in the Amazon automatically becomes an enemy of the ‘fazendeiros’, ‘madereiros’ (logging merchants) and ‘garimpeiros’ (diamond miners)… People that become rich overnight”, said yesterday to the House Monsignor Erwin Krautler, Bishop of Xingu, collaborator and friend of Sr. Dorothy Stang, who for years has received death threats.
After the assassination of the nun, Bishop Krautler had stated: “Our martyr Dorothy Stang was killed because she believed in a different dream for the Amazon, because she defended sustainable development projects and fought for the ‘asentiamento’ (settlement) of simple people in need of farm land to live. She rejected the idea of the infinite growth of ranches that to expand don’t accept any contrary voices”.
(From MISNA)