Brazil to Investigate U.S. Nun’s Killing

Amid outrage over mounting lawlessness in the Amazon, Brazil’s government Sunday promised a high-level investigation into the killing of an elderly American nun who spent years opposing illegal ranching and logging in the jungle.

Justice officials are expected to declare the slaying of Dorothy Stang a federal case, and lawmakers are planning to create a parliamentary commission to monitor the investigation into Saturday’s ambush of Stang and her colleagues outside Anapu, a small city in the rugged northern state of Para.

Environment Minister Marina Silva said President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva had called an emergency Cabinet meeting for Tuesday to discuss the killing and the recent escalation of violent standoffs between competing interests in the region.

Stang, 74, was shot several times en route to a meeting with poor farmers, whom the Ohio native had championed for two decades in their struggle against ranchers and loggers intent on claiming vast tracts of rain forest.

Despite reports that two people had been arrested, authorities said Sunday that they had only identified two suspected hit men and a third person who allegedly had helped hire them. None was in custody.

Human rights groups and environmentalists condemned the attack as the most serious recent sign of growing anarchy in Para, which covers nearly half a million square miles, much of it thick jungle.

Some large landholders in the area have formed private militias to guard their interests, and peasant farmers who oppose them have also taken up arms. Land disputes ending in death are not uncommon. Widespread corruption, influence peddling and lack of funding for police have combined to make the rule of law little more than theoretical in many parts of the state.

Late last month, loggers blocked highways and some stretches of river and threatened to shut down ports if officials did not satisfy their demands for deforestation rights. In response, the government agreed temporarily to reinstate logging permits, a move that incensed environmental advocates.

A longtime missionary who moved to the Amazon 22 years ago, Stang had received both accolades and death threats for her work among the poor and landless. In a recent television interview, she said that “any person who tries to stay in areas invaded by land speculators is threatened with death. They are highly armed, and no one is disarming them.”

Last week, Stang met with Human Rights Minister Nilmario Miranda and told him that some local farmers had been threatened for standing up to ranchers and loggers.

“Sister Dorothy defended the land rights of the locals. She was killed defending the rights of the weakest,” said Paulo Adario, the Amazon coordinator of the environmental group Greenpeace. “Enough killing. Enough blood in the Amazon.”

Noting that rampant corruption in Para had put some local authorities in the pocket of landholders, Adario expressed skepticism that Stang’s killers would be caught or adequately punished.

“These groups operate with impunity in a climate of social injustice that’s at the root of the problem,” he said. “Many times what happens is that the hired guns get let out of jail to commit the crime with permission from the police. I have my doubts [that] the one who ordered the crime will be arrested.”

Silva, the environment minister, insisted that officials would push hard for justice.

“The rule of law will prevail,” she said by telephone from Altamira, in central Para. “The punishment for the killing of Sister Dorothy will set an example.”

Both Silva and Adario characterized the attack as not only a targeted killing but a direct challenge to the government, because it occurred the same day that Silva was in Para to announce a multimillion-dollar project to promote small-scale, sustainable development.

“We will not retreat from our development policies in the region,” she said.

The cheerful, silver-haired Stang helped establish similar projects in Anapu, about 350 miles from the state capital, Belem, an area rich in hardwoods coveted by loggers.

She was on the rural outskirts of the city Saturday morning to meet with poor farmers when she was shot at least four times by two gunmen, witnesses said. The daily newspaper O Globo said on its website Sunday that an autopsy showed that Stang had been hit by six bullets.

Stang was a member of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, a Roman Catholic order founded in France in 1804. She is to be buried Tuesday in Anapu.