Paraguayan social movements are mobilising against the corrupt judicial system and for an integral land reform.
Social sectors demand a stop to the detentions of mobilised campesinos and a concrete answer to the severe situation in the countryside through the means of an agrarian emergency plan. There will be mobilisations and road blocks on the national highways on more than 10 core points around the country.
videoreport on the mobilisations
(Spanish)Results and victories of the mobilisation
(Spanish)Wednesday 5- Repression against campesinos en Asunción (with photo report)
(Spanish)Mobilisations in Ciudad del Este (with photo report)
(Spanish)Comunicado de la CONAMURI, en relación a los hechos sucedidos hoy frente a la Fiscalía general del Estado
(Spanish)Diez verdades en contra de la impunidad en el campo y un llamado a la paz
(Spanish)News of the mobilisations of march 4
On Tuesday November 4th, the Social and Popular Front, el frente Social y Popular (FSP) initiated a national mobilisation. It is expected that around 40.000 people all over the country will realise protests and road blocks. El Frente Social is a coordination platform that unites more than 100 organisations of Campesinos, Indigenous, Unions, Women, Sin Techos (without 'roofs'), Children workers, Artists, Seniors, Students, Small scale businesses, Social and Catholic workers among others.
The main demands of this mobilisation are the implementation of an agrarian emergency plan which the FSP designed and a total change of the judicial power. In Paraguay the judges and district attorneys play a core role in a network of corruption, they respond to the Colorado Party (of ex-dictator Stroessner) and in many cases against a worthily payment repress and haunt the mobilised popular sector. Therefore the FSP demands the abjuration of the State District Attorney, Candia Amarilla and of all the members of the Supreme Court of Justice. These institutions over the past month have been ordering various violent evictions of occupations and detentions of landless campesinos and community members acting against pesticide spraying on soy fields.
Within the campesino sectors the outrage towards the judicial power has been increasing as they have been using preventative arrests to be able to bring about 'legal' evictions of occupations bordering large real estates (which is not invasion of private property). Under the pretext of crime prevention, the district attorneys ordered a series of evictions, orders of arrest and arbitrary detentions of campesino leaders with severe charges. The most serious has been the death of campesino leader Bienvenido Melgarejo on October 3rd in the department of Alto Paraná.
The scale of police violence against the campesino sectors makes us fear that the repression will continue in the coming days. Therefore it is important and necessary that the international community is attentive to the situation in Paraguay. In this sense since a few weeks we started a protest action the pressure the government and the judicial system that they cease to attack the social movements. This letter can also be found on http://www.salvalaselva.org/protestaktion.php?id=326
The SojaMata team covered the events of protest in Paraguay in different points in the country and published in different alternative media.
