DEM VOLKE DIENEN

We are publishing an unofficial translation of a document from the LCP of Rondonia and Western Amazonia denouncing and condemning the recent massacre of peasants in the Tiago Campin dos Santos area.

Torture before the massacre

The massacre, perpetrated by the Special Operations Battalion (BOPE) on 28 January in the Nova Mutum Paraná region, Porto Velho district, was preceded by the arbitrary arrest and torture of at least three peasants from the Tiago Campim dos Santos area, one of whom was shot in the shoulder, while two other peasants, comrades Esticado and Mandruvá, were tortured and killed.

The peasants Esticado (Rodrigo Hawerroth) and Mandruvá (Raniel Barbosa Laurindo) were not in possession of a weapon, were arrested by the military police and brutally tortured without any chance of defence and later cowardly murdered. The marks on the comrades' bodies leave no doubt about the cruelty they were subjected to, both bodies had numerous bruises from rifle butts and blows, perforations on the body, including in the eyes, furthermore comrade Rodrigo had his tongue torn out and both ends of his mouth cut by a sharp object.

In addition to this shameful crime, other troops of the military police under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Pontes attacked the families camped near BR 364, shooting and throwing bombs in their direction, robbing and destroying their belongings and carrying out arbitrary and illegal repression and expulsions.

All this to defend the privileges and illegal interests of the large landowner Antonio Martins dos Santos, the Galo Velho, the notorious thief of public lands of the Union, who has been denounced several times and has been the target of various actions by the Federal Ministry of Public Affairs. The military police of the governor, Colonel Marcos Rocha, lackey of the landowner, has committed a series of crimes against the peasants of this region in defence of the bandit Galo Velho, land robber, land thief, leader of an armed gang (almost always made up of police officers) and murderer of peasants.

And in the face of all this, the press monopolies (G1 of the Globo network) and the rubbish press of Rondonia (rondoniaovivo et al.) fulfil their role as usual as mouthpieces of the hoodlum police and the big landowners. They remain silent about such serious crimes or confine themselves to repeating the mercenary police's mendacious version of an armed confrontation and exchange of fire, always trying to slander and demonise the peasants in the struggle for land as the worst criminals in order to absurdly justify the practice of mistreatment, torture and summary executions.

It only takes a little honesty, it only takes eyes to see with a simple glance the photos showing the situation in which the bodies of comrades Esticado and Mandruvá were presented, mutilated and already lifeless, to confirm that they were brutally tortured and murdered in cold blood and that the police version is nothing but a shameless and cynical farce to hide once again the truth of the facts.

Till when will this outfit of murderers and uniformed bandits of the old state continue to commit torture and murder of peasants with impunity?

As long as it depends on the governors of the landlords, the other politicians of Rondonia, the mercenaries of the police and a large section of the judiciary of the state, the landlords who steal the land from the Union and their armed gangs, the national press monopolies and the rubbish press of Rondonia, all of whom are the same scoundrel and are richly funded with public money, this will continue until they are wiped out by the revolution in the country.

But as long as this does not happen, they are mistaken if they believe that they can continue their crimes with impunity without being reacted to. No matter how much they try to use repression and state terror to put down the peasants' struggle, while on the one hand there is a handful of parasitic landowners protected by the old state who seize most of the land, and on the other hand millions of poor peasants who are landless or have little land, the struggle for agrarian revolution, for land for those who work it, will continue to grow; and the spilt blood of our comrades will be avenged, we will respond with the same violence, you can count on it! The blood of our people shed in struggle does not drown it, but soaks our cause, makes our flags even redder, increases our class hatred, our determination and our will to fight. The risk the stick takes, the axe takes! We'll pick up the tab and you'll pay dearly for it!

To the peasants, the workers, the small and medium entrepreneurs, the students, the teachers, the people's artists, the honest intellectuals, the class and democratic organisations and bodies and the truly democratic people: We call on all to demand the punishment of those who ordered and carried out the abuses, the tortures and the murder of the peasants!

Honour and glory to the comrades who fell in the struggle for soil!

Punishment for those who carried out and ordered the murders of the people's fighters!

Out of our territories, raccoon police of the big landowners who are thieves of the Union land!

The land of Tiago dos Santos belongs to the people!

Conquer the land! Destroy the latifundium!

Long live the agrarian revolution!

LCP - League of Poor Peasants of Rondonia and Western Amazonia

On February 11, a broad alliance consisting of different progressive and revolutionarist forces from Basel had called for the "Revolutionary Climate Demonstration". About 500 people from Switzerland, Germany and France took part in the demonstration, aiming to advance a revolutionary and anti-capitalist standpoint in the climate movement.

In Bremen, actions have been carried out in recent days denouncing and condemning the current crimes and cruelties of the old states of the big landowners and bureaucratic capitalists in Brazil and Mexico against the people and especially the poor peasants, and expressing solidarity with the struggling masses, especially those who are developing the struggle under the leadership of the League of Poor Peasants (LCP) in Brazil and the Popular Current - Red Sun (CP-Sol Rojo) in Mexico. We share information and pictures that have been sent to us.

On February 8th, the Alliance Against Imperialist Aggression held a rally to denounce the massacre of several poor peasants in the Brazilian state of Rondina and the threats to the people's resistance against the Interoceanic Corridor of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec (CIIT) in the municipality of Rincón Tagolaba (Rinconcito) in Tehuantepec, Oaxaca (Mexico). The Alliance Against Imperialist Aggression had called for the rally after the threats to the people's resistance against the imperialist mega-project in Mexico became known. Shortly after, the massacre of the poor peasants in Brazil also became known, so the Alliance Against Imperialist Aggression updated its call and immediately denounced these cruel murders by the Brazilian state and its police.

The Munich Security Conference will take place between February 17 and 19. Originally, Foreign Minister Baerbock wanted to present the first "National Security Strategy" of the FRG, on which the Foreign Ministry has been working for a year. As of now this will probably be delayed for some time still. However, since the topic has been on everyone's lips in recent weeks, there were once again calls from various quarters of the bourgeois press at the beginning of the year calling for a so-called "National Security Council" Yankee-style. In January, the heads of the state chancelleries of the federal states met at a crisis meeting to discuss this matter further, while at the same time the heads of the traffic light coalition tried to settle their differences behind closed doors.

Finland

On Friday, January 27^th, the 105^th anniversary of the Finnish Worker’s Revolution was celebrated.

We piblish a english translation of the weekly editorial of the revolutionary and democratic newspaper A Nova Democracia from Brasil.

Much noise was made when Luiz Inácio fired, on the 21st, some 80 military personnel serving at the Planalto and the then Army Commander, Júlio César de Arruda, replacing him with Tomás Miguel Ribeiro Paiva. Some, dizzy with the blind belief in the “stability” of bourgeois democracy and the country’s rotten institutions, and that Yankee imperialism “will not permit a coup,” went so far as to proclaim that the effective “Lula government” was being inaugurated, without the tutelage of the Armed Forces. Luiz Inácio proclaimed that he distrusted the Armed Forces, that he wanted a Cabinet of Institutional Security (GSI) without military staff, and played games for the audience that he would not accept military assistants (and soon after, would have them), in a staging that he would not submit to “military power,” to try to restrict the generals’ room for maneuver through isolation in public opinion.

After interior minister of Baden-Württemberg, Thomas Strobl (CDU) called the last turn of the year a "completely normal New Year's Eve", he has changed his position completely and demands with his parliamentary group stronger repression and surveillance against the people. Among other things, the head of the parliamentary group Manuel Hagel even goes so far as to demand body cams for firefighters and emergency medical personnel.