Forest activist Dorothy Stang's murder

"When Sister Dorothy Stang was murdered last weekend, it was just another day in the lives of the perpetrators. This is perhaps the most prominent activist to be murdered in the Amazon since Chico Mendez in 1988.

"She spent decades fighting efforts by loggers and large landholders who continued to steal land and clear large areas of the Amazon rainforest. Shot to death Saturday in northern Brazil by thugs, doubtless hired by the very loggers and Latifunda who accused Stang of inciting violence in the region and supplying weapons and ammunition to local people.

"Her assasination ought come as no surprise in an region still plagued with routine land-related killings, intimidation tactics and use of enslaved peoples as a workforce. Human Rights advocates who worked with Sister Dorothy remain skeptical that the Brazilian government will be able to do anything to change this. Para is the Amazon state with the highest murder rate related to land disputes. According to the Pastoral Land Commission (CPT), a Catholic organisation campaigning for landless people and the poor, 1,237 rural workers died in Brazil from 1985 to 2001, and 40 percent of these occurred in Para ..."
Source: Short Takes: Will Brady's Ruminations
Remembering Sister Dorothy Stang
Dorothy Stang, 74, defended the land
Funeral held for rainforest advocate Stang (NPR, audio linked)

Death of Chico Mendez, in the Book of Days