In Brazil
he has already received the National Human Rights Prize. In
August, the Council of Order of Labor Judges conferred on him
the title of "Commander." In France, he was distinguished
in 1995 with the title of the Legion of Honor, the highest honor
of that country.
In 2000 and 2001 he was
considered for the Anti-Slavery prize, considered the alternative Nobel Peace
prize. Nevertheless, public recognition in the human rights scene does not
prevent assassination threats against the Dominican Brother Henry des Roziers
in the south of Pará state.
Member of the coordinating
council of the Land Ministry Committee (Comissão Pastoral da Terra
or CPT) of Pará, Henry des Roziers, who is also a lawyer, lives in
Xinguara, where he confronts the strong opposition of the politicians and
large land owners. For at least ten years he has been on the main hit lists
of those destined to be killed, where the names of João Canuto and
Expedito Ribeiro, presidents of the Rural Workers Union of Rio Maria, also
were until their respective assassinations in 1985 and 1991.
In 2001, the lawyer succeeded
in obtaining an unprecedented victory in Brazilian courts: the condemnation
of a landowner who ordered the assassination of a union leader. Jerônimo
Alves do Amorim was condemned to nineteen and a half years of prison for the
death of Expedito Ribeiro. Amorim escaped from prison and Brother Henry continues
to suffer from defamation and threat campaigns.
Nowadays, in addition
to defending union activists, Brother Henry works for the exposure of slave
labor in the south of Pará. Seventy-three years old, he accompanies
the work of inspection of the Mobile Group, a section of the Labor Ministry.
The Ministry calculates
that more than 70 percent of the cases of slave labor in Brazil take place
in Pará. Of the 1,695 slaves encountered in the first six months of
this year, 1,193 were freed from farms in that state.
At the beginning of the
year, Brother Henry sent to the office of the Ministério Público
Federal—roughly, the federal attorney general—a list with the names
of 48 projects of farmers and cattle raisers that have slave labor. The major
part of the listed farms receives funds from the Amazonian Investment Fund
(Finam). The list includes major ranchers such as Roque Quagliato, who also
owns sugar and alcohol mills in Ourinhos, in the state of São Paulo,
as well as six farms in the south of Pará.
The most well-known member
of his family, Roque received Queen Silvia of Sweden at his large farm in
Bannach. He is an old customer of Sudam (Superintendência para o Desenvolvimento
da Amazônia—Amazon Development Agency, a federal program to encourage
economic growth in the impoverished Amazonian region], from which he received
millions of reais (plural of "real," worth today about 1/3 of a
dollar, but was almost equal to the dollar as recently as 1998) in recent
decades to create farming and cattle raising projects in tropical forest areas.
Brother Henry's exposures
of the farmers' corruption increased the defamation campaigns against him.
He was accused of inciting violence in 2002 because of a demonstration by
teachers on strike in Rio Maria in the state of Pará. A year before,
he received dozens of death threats and was the object of a worldwide solidarity
campaign promoted by Amnesty International, which brought in 5,000 Christmas
cards from all over the world.
This article was
published originally in Portuguese by Brazil de Fato. You can contact
the author writing to redacao@brasildefato.com.br
