We publish a declaration of solidarity by the Red Women's Committees - FRG for the revolutionary peasents movement in Brazil, that was sent to us. The declaration is also published in Spanish and German.
Proletarians of all countries, unite!
The Brazilian state is threatening a new massacre!
Solidarity with the revolutionary peasant movement in Brazil!
The contradictions in Brazil are sharpening. This fact is also known in the FRG not only since the installation of the genocidal president Bolsonaro. Also in the bourgeois media, reports about the struggles of the people against exploitation and oppression have been increasing in recent years. It is worth recalling the struggles of 2013 and 2014, which were ignited by the protest against the increase in public transport fares, these went directly into the struggles before and during the 2014 World Cup, which was held on the back of the Brazilian people. Since these great struggles, Brazil has not been at peace, it can be said without any doubt: the Brazilian people is fighting! But there is one struggle that has received little attention in the bourgeois media in this country: the struggle of the poor and landless peasants for the land that was illegally taken from them by the Brazilian state and the big landowners. The latter own huge estates, which they group together in so-called haciendas, while many small peasants can barely live off the yield of their land or do not own any land at all.
For this reason, the poor and landless peasants organise themselves and fight for sufficient land for all, which is cultivated collectively. The revolutionary peasant movement takes the land with land occupations, the peasants then divide the land among themselves. This struggle is met with brute force by the big landowners and the Brazilian state. This culminated in the "Massacre of Corumbiara" in August 1995 - as which this struggle on the Hacienda Santa Elina is internationally known. Here, the peasants' struggle was answered by a bloody massacre by the Brazilian state. Since then, nothing has changed and the terror against the revolutionary peasant movement knows no bounds. The peasants are driven from their land, which is their livelihood, the big landowners send armed gangs paid by them and the military police. Persecutions, kidnappings and murders of peasants and their revolutionary leaders continue to be on the agenda. All this because the peasants are taking what belongs to them and what they need to live. It shows how the poor and landless peasants are repeatedly called by their situation to fight against the big landowners and the Brazilian state, and that the latter will stop at nothing to maintain their murderous system.
Now the government of the state of Rondônia - located in the western Amazon region of Brazil - is threatening to carry out a new massacre at the Hacienda Santa Elina. In recent days, a series of actions have already been carried out by the Brazilian state, showing that a new offensive is being prepared against the revolutionary peasant movement. An entire camp of the revolutionary peasant movement in the region has been under siege since the end of March; not even vaccinations against the Corona virus are allowed any more. The security secretary Cisneiro Pachá - better known among the peasants as the Butcher of Santa Elina, who already commanded the murders and torture of peasants in 1995 as an officer of the military police - and the governor of the state Marcos Rocha, who is also a colonel of the military police, are the ones responsible for actions against the revolutionary peasant movement in the region. They are also trying to portray the revolutionary peasant movement as an armed organisation in order to criminalise it.
We call on all revolutionary, progressive and democratically-minded organisations, people, artists, etc. to express their protest against the preparation of the new massacre against the poor and landless peasants in a great wave of international solidarity, to create public opinion for the peasants' struggle and to unfold different actions of solidarity.
Down with the criminalisation of the struggle for land and the new massacre being prepared in Rondônia!
Red Women's Committees - FRG
April 2021
