CPI on MST visits Pontal do Paranapanema region

Members of the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry (CPI) on the Landless Workers Movement (MST) were on the morning of this Monday (29), in Presidente Pudente, in the interior of São Paulo, when they met with the Judiciary Police Department of São Paulo (Deinter). The parliamentarians carry out diligences in the rural area of ​​Pontal do Paranapanema, place of settlements and encampments, according to information from the executive secretary of the CPI, which did not specify the places to be visited. According to MST member Zelitro Luz, who works for the movement in that region, the delegation was visiting two camps today – Olga Benário and Miriam Farias – in the municipality of Sandovalina, and Fazenda Santa Mônica, in the municipality of Rosana. All camps belong to the National Front for Country and City Struggle (FNL). “The CPI is unaware of these various social organizations in the countryside. For them [parlamentares], everything is MST, that’s why. Although the focus is MST, they wanted to reach all land struggle movements independent of the MST,” he said. He added that the CPI’s attention was drawn to the fact that the FNL carried out a recent action in Pontal do Paranapanema, in February, called the Red Carnival, when some leaders of the front were arrested. Note from the MST The parliamentarians initially confirmed in the delegation were the president of the CPI, Lieutenant Colonel Zucco, the rapporteur Ricardo Salles, Captain Alden, Caroline de Toni, Magda Mofatto, Messias Donato, Nilto Tatto and Rodolfo Nogueira. In a note, the MTS stated that the CPI is an attempt to persecute and criminalize the popular struggle and that the movement has been fighting for almost 40 years so that the Federal Constitution is fulfilled and the social function of the land is respected. “Wanting to criminalize our struggle through a CPI is a strategy to omit the real problems and contradictions of the agribusiness production model in the Brazilian countryside, such as increasing deforestation, land grabbing, fires, violence in the countryside, use of labor analogous to slavery and the destruction and contamination of natural assets through the use of pesticides,” says the MST statement.

Agência Brasil