http://www.indystar.com/articles/5/221993-9755-010.html
Quote:
74-year-old American nun is slain in northern Brazil
February 13, 2005
Sao Paulo, Brazil -- An American nun was shot to death in northern Brazil on Saturday, less than a week after she accused loggers and ranchers of threatening to kill rural workers, authorities said.
Dorothy Stang, 74, was shot in the face three times near the town of Anapu, about 2,100 kilometers north of Sao Paulo in the Amazon region, federal police officer Fernando Raiol said.
The attack on Stang, who had lived in Brazil since the early 1960s and worked in the region for more than 20 years, came less than a week after she met with Human Rights Secretary Nilmario Miranda to report that four local farmers had received death threats.
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http://olympics.reuters.com/newsArti...toryID=7610636
American Nun Shot Dead in Brazil's Amazon
By Leonardo Pedro
BELEM, Brazil (Reuters) - A 74-year-old American nun was shot to death early on Saturday in Brazil's Amazon rain forest, where she worked for decades to defend human rights and the environment despite constant death threats.
Two gunmen shot U.S. missionary Dorothy Stang in an isolated jungle settlement of landless peasants 30 miles from the town of Anapu in the state of Para, police and fellow religious workers said.
"It was three shots at point-blank range," said Sister Betsy Flynn of Stang's order, the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur. "She received so many threats; I just never thought it would happen."
"Two hired gunmen have now been identified and there are other people involved. There are witnesses that will be protected," Human Rights Minister Nilmario Miranda said in an interview on national television. He used the word "pistoleiro," used in Brazil to describe a contract killer.
Brazil's government compared the killing of the award-winning activist to that of legendary Amazon campaigner Chico Mendes, who was gunned down in 1988 and became a martyr in the fight to save the rain forest and protect its people.
President Luiz Inacio Lula sent ministers and police teams to the area to carry out a manhunt and investigation.
His government expressed outrage that Stang should be slain just two weeks after it launched a national human rights program from the Belem state capital.
"This type of cruel, vile crime reveals complete lack of respect for the law and democracy," Brazilian Justice Minister Tomaz Bastos said in a statement. "It will not go without punishment."
Only this month, Stang warned Miranda she and landless workers faced continual death threats.
Stang was on a list of human rights workers who face possible assassination. The list was compiled by the Brazilian Order of Lawyers (OAB), a nationwide lawyers group.
The OAB said she accepted the threats as part of her work persuading hired gunmen not to attack peasant camps and reporting the human rights abuses of land speculators, illegal loggers and large ranchers, the OAB said.
Stang, who had lived in Brazil for more than three decades, recently won an OAB human rights award for her work in the area of the Trans-Amazonian highway. The state of Para named her woman of the year.
"This death is just more encouragement to continue her work to confront the people who are destroying the forest," said Meire Cohen of the OAB. "She used to walk kilometers and kilometers in the middle of the forest teaching women how to take better care of their children and use the forest without destroying it."
The U.S. Embassy in Brazil said it was "concerned" by Stang's death. She was a native of Ohio.
"We trust there will be a full investigation by the police," said a spokesman.
In 2002, Stang told U.S. environmental magazine Outside about the daily risks of her work.
"The logging companies work with a threat logic. ... They elaborate a list of leaders, and then a second movement appears to eliminate those people," Stang told the magazine. "If I get a stray bullet ... we know exactly who did it."
(Additional reporting by Andrew Hay in Brasilia)
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