wfn.org | [PCUSANEWS] Family of murdered nun seeking justice in Brazil

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Note #8932 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

05518
Sept. 27, 2005

Family of murdered nun 
seeking justice in Brazil
      
Ethel Kennedy joins forces with siblings of Amazon land-reform activist

by Chris Herlinger
Ecumenical News International  
      
NEW YORK - The family of a murdered U.S. nun and land-reform activist is
pressuring Brazil's government to prosecute those who they believe ordered
her killing, not just the gunmen who shot her.	
       
	The family of Sister Dorothy Stang, a 73-year-old member of the
Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur and a long-time resident of Brazil, have the
support of Ethel Kennedy, the widow of the late Robert F. Kennedy, the
assassinated U.S. senator and presidential candidate.  
       
	Ethel Kennedy, who represents a human rights foundation named after
her husband, will join Stang's siblings in seeking an audience with Brazilian
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, during a planned visit to Brazil.	
       
	They want the case to be heard in a federal court because only the
two gunmen who allegedly shot Stang - but not the landowners believed to have
ordered it - have been charged by local authorities in the Feb. 12 killing in
Para state.  
       
	Some Stang family members were in Brazil this week. In statements
reported in the U.S. and Brazilian media, they and representatives of the
Robert F. Kennedy Center for Human Rights expressed disappointment with the
Brazilian government.  
       
	They say the government has not implemented land-use and human rights
reforms in the impoverished Amazon rain-forest region that Stang loved.

	"This murder was foretold," Emily Goldman, a researcher for the
Robert F. Kennedy Center for Human Rights, told Ecumenical News
International. "Unfortunately, (Stang's) murder was one of a horribly long
list of killings over the issue of land rights."   
       
	Stang, who worked with the Roman Catholic Church's advocacy group,
the Pastoral Land Commission, had received death threats from loggers and
ranchers before she was killed. Activists say President da Silva, a champion
of land reform, has not done enough to impose order on the essentially
lawless region.   
       
	The Brazilian government says it has begun implementing reforms that
will help settle 430,000 landless families before 2006.

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