Sunday, February 20, 2005
BRAZILIAN AUTHORITIES DETAIN SUSPECT IN NUN’S MURDER
Dorothy Stang Spent Decades Defending Para's Peasant Settlers
By Michael Ireland
Chief Correspondent, ASSIST News Service

BRAZIL (ANS) -- A man suspected of involvement in the murder of a US-born nun who tried to protect the Amazon rainforest in Brazil has turned himself in to police. Sister Dorothy Stang, 74, who spent decades defending peasant settlers, was shot dead last Saturday. (Pictured: Dorothy Stang spent decades defending Para's peasant settlers. Credit: Agence-France Presse via BBC website).

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) says Amair Freijoli da Cunha surrendered in Altamira, a town about 130km (80 miles) from the scene of the murder in Anapu, in the state of Para. Cunha allegedly was the intermediary who hired two gunmen for a farmer accused of ordering the killing, police say. He told police he knew the farmer, but denies hiring the gunmen.

Cunha turned himself in with his lawyer and was expected to be questioned later on Saturday, police said.
Meanwhile, Brazilian troops are continuing to arrive in the region help track down the missionary's killers. The two alleged gunmen are believed to be hiding deep in the rainforest, while the farmer is thought to have fled the area on a private plane, the BBC said.

Brazil's government is under pressure to deliver the perpetrators to justice as the case continues to resonate across the country and beyond, the BBC’s Steve Kingstone in Sao Paulo says.

After the murder, the government said it planned to protect a huge swathe of the Amazon. It said nearly four million hectares (10 million acres) in Para state would become a conservation area in a bid to ward off loggers and landowners. The government said it also wanted to reinforce the environmental police force.

Sister Dorothy, who was a naturalized Brazilian, had complained that the government was not doing enough to stop land-related violence.

BAY AREA NUNS MOURN SISTER KILLED IN AMAZON
The Oakland Tribune newspaper at www.insidebayarea.com  said Sister Dorothy, who was an environmental activist with close ties to Notre Dame de Namur University, was shot to death in the Amazon jungle amid heightened tensions between land speculators and peasant settlers in the region. The killing brought a Brazilian government pledge to crack down on lawlessness.

The newspaper reported that Stang, 74, was shot four times in the chest and head while visiting a remote rural encampment near the Trans-Amazon Highway in Para State. She was renowned throughout the Amazon region for her work with the poor and landless and for her efforts to preserve the rain forest.

According to the newspaper, Stang was a native of Dayton, Ohio, and a member of The Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, an international Catholic religious congregation with about 2,000 members on five continents. The California branch has its headquarters in Belmont, California, where the order sponsors a parochial school, and a university, at which Stang studied.

Sister Margaret Hoffman, communications director for the California unit, said Stang was very close to the current residents of the local province center. Some of them went on a pilgrimage to Europe with Stang for the order's 200th anniversary just three months ago, the newspaper said in a report to which staff writer Malaika Fraley and Larry Rohter of the New York Times News Service contributed.

"We were stunned," said Hoffman. She said the sisters heard the news about Stang's murder on Saturday after a prayer service.

Hoffman said they heard reports during the last several months that Stang's life was being threatened, and they had been praying for her safety.

"She knew she was on a death list, but she was so dedicated to people she was working with," said Hoffman, who is arranging a memorial for Stang.

The newspaper reported that officials in Brazil view the attack as a challenge to the authority of the government, which has faced resistance from loggers and land speculators in the region over new land-use and ownership regulations.
It said that immediately after the killing, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva ordered two members of his Cabinet and a special police investigation unit to the area.

"Solving this crime and apprehending those who ordered and committed it is a question of honor for us," said Nilmario Miranda, the government's secretary for human rights.

A spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Brasilia said officials there were following the case and were awaiting additional information.

Stang lived and worked in the Amazon region since the early 1970s, focusing on organizing and educating peasant groups about issues such as land tenure and the economic and environmental benefits of avoiding deforestation, the newspaper reported.

"This is a terrible, tremendous loss," said Paulo Moutinho, coordinator of the Institute for Environmental Research in the Amazon and a longtime associate of Stang.

"She was an extremely important person, a spokesman for the sustainable development movement with a capacity for leadership as big as that of Chico Mendes." He referred to the internationally known rubber tapper leader killed in 1988.

Stang's Brazilian associates said Sunday that they feared new attacks aimed at intimidating them and crippling their efforts.

SLAIN MISSIONARY TO BE REMEMBERED AT ALMA MATER
The Associated Press (AP) said a memorial service will be held in April for Stang who served almost 40 years as a missionary in Brazil after graduating from Notre Dame de Namur University in 1964 and had raised money to build a parish church in her adopted hometown of Anapu.

Friends say it was her activism on behalf of local peasants facing eviction by cattle barons and timber companies that may have led enemies to kill her, the AP said.

The news agency reported that last June, Stang was named "Woman of the Year" by the state of Para for her work in the Amazon region.

The AP said that in December 2004, she received the Humanitarian of the Year award from the Brazilian Bar Association for her work helping the local rural workers.

Earlier this year, she received an "Honorary Citizenship of the State."

Stang was a member of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, an international religious order of about 2,000 women serving on five continents.

The organization has issued an invitation to the public to a memorial honoring Stang on April 2 at 1:30 p.m. at Cunningham Memorial Chapel, on the campus of Notre Dame de Namur.

According to the AP, authorities say Stang was ambushed Saturday while driving to a community meeting in a remote, lawless region.

"They stopped her car, and she got out and they were pointing guns at her," said Sister Joan Krimm, a lifelong friend. "So she took out her Bible and said, 'This is my weapon,' and started reading to them."

The gunmen then fired at least six bullets into her body at close range, according to Brazilian reports, the AP said.
The news agency said Brazilian President Luiz Inacio da Silva has ordered a high-level investigation into the killing, while other authorities have pledged to increase the number of police and environmental officers in the area.
About 2,000 soldiers headed Wednesday to the region to crack down on landholders who have improperly laid claim to large areas of forest.

"She is a martyr, but she was a human being and bullheaded as they come," said Stang's sister, Sacramento, California, resident Norma Stang.

"The higher-ups (in Brazil) just saw this little old lady in tennis shoes and thought, 'How much can she do?' I think that's why she lived as long as she did."

Norma Stang said her sister became a more visible target beginning in December, when she received her environmental award from the Brazilian Bar Association and appeared on Brazilian television.

The AP said the president on Thursday also signed decrees creating two massive new forest reserves, succumbing to intense pressure to protect a lawless Amazon region from violent loggers and ranchers. The measures will form a reserve of 8.15 million acres and a national park spanning 1.1 million acres in the state of Para, where Stang was slain.
"We can't give in to people committing acts of violence," said Environment Minister Marina Silva, who announced the decrees. "The government is putting the brakes on in front of the predators."

The decrees were announced after more than 60 groups signed a letter to the president demanding strong moves to curb "violence and impunity associated with the illegal occupation of lands and deforestation" in the Amazon -- and especially in Para, nearly twice the size of Texas.

SLAIN U.S. NUN AT HEART OF BRAZIL BATTLE
Michael Astor of the Associated Press (AP) writes that on the Boa Esperanca Settlement in Brazil a crude cross of tree branches now marks the spot where American nun Dorothy Stang died on a red mud road cutting through dense green jungle. It also marks ground zero of a battle over how the Amazon, the world's largest remaining tropical wilderness, will be developed -- or destroyed.

Stang, 73, a spunky, softly spoken nun from Dayton, Ohio, was shot dead on Feb. 12 in a dispute with an influential rancher in the eastern Amazon state of Para, on the frontier of forest and development, where powerful interests collide with the Amazon's poor, Astor wrote.

"Before she came here, she was in southern Para, where loggers cut down everything, and she saw that model brought only disgrace for many and improvements for only a few," said Felicio Pontes Jr., a federal prosecutor who often worked with Stang on land issues. "She vowed not to let that happen here."

That vow cost Stang her life -- and made her a symbol for rain forest defenders, Astor said.
Astor reported that when Stang, a member of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, was shot she became the most celebrated martyr to die defending the rain forest since Chico Mendes, the rubber tapper and guardian of the Amazon who was killed in 1988.

While Mendes' death brought international attention, increased environmental awareness and government regulations, much has remained the same, he wrote.

Astor continued: “The Amazon is still a wild, mostly lawless region. Loggers, ranchers and developers are still cutting it down -- about 20 percent of the 1.6 million square mile wilderness already has been destroyed.”
He cites that an estimated 9,169 square miles of the Amazon rain forest was cut down in 2003, the last year for which government figures are available.

“Like Mendes, Stang preached living in harmony with the forest rather than cutting it down for quick gain. But Stang, unlike Mendes, had a vast arsenal of environmental laws and land use regulations that strengthened her argument with ranchers.

“Not that many listened,” Astor wrote.

"Dorothy would call up all the government agencies and demand this and that, and when they'd hang up on her she'd go to Belem (the state capital) or Brasilia and knock on their doors. She'd even open up their file cabinets," remembers Claudia Marcia Cavalcante, 31, an agricultural technician with the farming cooperative formed by Stang.
Astor said that Stang's success earned her the hostility of local ranchers, who were used to grabbing whatever land they wanted, using forged deeds or no deeds at all.

"They throw up a fence and send 'pistoleiros' to stay there and keep people out. If there are people there they burn down their huts and force them off at gun point," explained Cavalcante.

Astor wrote that according to witnesses, Stang was killed because she was trying to halt logging in an area of near-pristine jungle coveted by rancher Vitalmiro Goncalves Moura. Police are searching for Moura but think he fled the region after the killing.

Stang claimed Moura had no right to the land where she wanted to create a Sustainable Development Project -- where settlers are granted land if they agree to preserve the forest.

For weeks, men working for Moura knocked down and burned the settlers' rickety thatched-roof huts in an attempt to expel them from the land, Astor wrote.

"They kept burning down the huts and Dorothy kept having us put them back up. She ruined their plans, so they killed her," said settler Raimundo Alfredo Campelo Maia, 39, who lives near the spot where Stang was killed.
Maia recalls taking long walks with Stang through the jungle to visit poor settlers, where she talked about her commitment to the poor and saving the environment.

"She always spent the night with the poorest people. She lived like they lived and ate what they ate," said Maia.
She learned compassion early, growing up in a Catholic family during the post-Depression years with nine brothers and sisters, Astor wrote.

“The family wasted nothing, using tire treads to resole shoes and saving apple and potato peels for compost. Her younger sister Barbara recalled that the family welcomed the needy, taking in strangers for weeks until they found a job at a local factory,” Astor wrote, adding: “Two of Stang's brothers became priests. She went further, spending 23 years in this remote jungle region, quietly lobbying the government to improve education, the rutted dirt roads and health care.”

Astor said Stang taught local residents to protect the environment and to form farming cooperatives to sell the fruits harvested from the forest.

“In the past five years, Stang began to focus intently on environmental and land issues. The area was in transition, and government plans to pave the nearby Trans-Amazon highway and build a massive hydroelectric dam brought people flooding into the Anapu region,” he wrote.

Loggers also started moving in, Astor said.

“The dense jungle around the town was quickly cut down to make room for simple clapboard houses, and the jungle trails were widened to let logging trucks in.

“Stang was a watchdog, alerting government agencies to environmental abuses and checking if loggers had legitimate land title. She received frequent death threats, and colleagues say she was part of a long list of union organizers and activists slated to die,” Astor wrote.

"She fought hard. Maybe with her blood she'll accomplish in death what she couldn't accomplish during her life," said Rev. Lucas Rodriguez, a priest who work with Stang in the region for many years.
Astor reported that amid an international outcry over Stang's death, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Thursday put nearly 19,900 square miles of Amazon land under federal environmental protection and suspended logging in some hotly disputed areas.

But many worry that the protection will exist only on paper, and that illegal logging will continue. The Amazon is just too big to control, they say.

Jose Roberval de Souza, president of the local association of logging industries, called Stang a friend and said her death was tragic. But he blamed it on excessive regulations, that make legal logging difficult and encourage illegal activity and land grabbing.

"If you want us to stop logging, make a law and ban the practice altogether. We just want to know how we are supposed to work," said Souza. "We are in favor of reserves but in a way that loggers can do their work."

U.S. NUN SLAIN IN BRAZIL LEARNED COMPASSION EARLY IN LIFE
James Hannah, writing in the Chicago Sun-Times said that growing up in the post-Depression era with nine brothers and sisters, Dorothy Stang learned early about compassion. She and her siblings were allowed 1 inch of water in the bathtub to wash and another to rinse, but at the same time their parents opened their house to the homeless and cared for anyone in need.

“The lessons compelled Stang to leave high school for a convent after her junior year, leading to 39 years of missionary work in Brazil, where she tried to help the poor and keep loggers and land speculators from destroying the Amazon jungle,” Hannah wrote.

He reported that at 73, the member of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, who rode a motorcycle, wore hand-painted T-shirts and craved chunky peanut butter, was shot six times at close range Feb. 12.

Hannah said that thousands of mourners held an all-night vigil and filed past Stang's coffin in the jungle town of Anapu. Thursday, Brazil's president ordered the creation of an environmental protection area in the lawless region.
Stang was a naturalized Brazilian and helped residents grow vegetables, plant trees, set up a flour mill and build a dam.
Letters to her family reflected her growing concern for the region including Anapu, home to 7,000.

''We're in the midst of serious land problems, as the rich just can't let the needy also have something to earn their daily bread,'' she said in a 2002 letter.

Hannah said that Stang, known as ''Dot,'' grew up on the outskirts of Dayton, the fifth of 10 children. There was a barn, chickens, rabbits, a river and a backyard where Stang often hit home runs over the clothesline.

“Her father, Henry, a chemical engineer at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, believed in wasting nothing. Tire treads were used to resole shoes. Apple and potato peels were saved for compost,” he wrote, adding: “That frugality lead to her environmentalism, and her compassion sprang from the family's openness to strangers, said a younger sister, Barbara Richardson.”

''We took in everybody,'' Richardson said. ''They'd stay a week, two weeks, until they got a job at one of the factories.''

In high school, Stang worked for the Dominican Sisters of the Sick Poor, making dressings and bandages. That experience prompted her to leave Julienne High School and enter a Cincinnati convent. She taught at a Catholic middle school in Chicago and was a missionary in Arizona.

From Brazil, Stang sent relatives photos that showed her wearing wire-rimmed glasses and a wooden crucifix while riding a burro or her mud-caked, off-road motorcycle. She swam in the Amazon River in spite of sharp-toothed piranha, ate snakes and grasshopper-like bugs, and showered in the 115-degree heat using water from coffee cans.
''She didn't want anybody to think she dressed better, had more, or did different than the people,'' Richardson said.
''Enjoy a good cold beer watching a good football game,'' she wrote to her sister in one letter.

''She was a little old nun,'' Richardson said. ''Who ever thought anybody would kill her?''

STANG ‘DEFENDED THE LAND‘
Among Brazilian farmers, Sister Dorothy Stang was known as the "angel of the Trans-Amazonian," writes Maggie Downs, Enquirer staff writer, in the Cincinnati Enquirer at www.Cincinnati.com.

Through the Pastoral Land Commission, the 74-year-old was an environmental activist who tirelessly helped the impoverished farmers of the Trans-Amazonian area of Anapu, Para, Downs writes.

"She wanted to live and die for those people, and that's exactly what she did," said Provincial Elizabeth Marie Bowyer, 73, head of Ohio Province of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur in Reading.

Sister Dorothy was shot three times in the face Saturday while visiting a remote encampment in the jungle.
Downs says that born June 7, 1931, in Dayton, Ohio, Sister Dorothy attended Julienne High School. In 1948, she entered the order of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur and finished high school at Mount Notre Dame High School in Reading, Ohio.

One of her closest friends was Sister Joan Krimm, 75, who entered the order with her. "She always wanted to give her life to the ministry," Sister Joan said.
Sister Dorothy was a staunch supporter of sustainable development and taught how to avoid deforestation, Downs said.

"And in doing so, she made a lot of enemies," Bowyer said.
Sister Dorothy had returned to Cincinnati regularly in the past couple of years. Macular degeneration was dimming her sight.

Stang will be laid to rest in Brazil. "She wanted to be buried where she worked," Sister Joan said.
A memorial will be 3:30 p.m. March 19 at Mount Notre Dame Convent Chapel in Reading.