Brazil: Agriculture Confederation asks the Supreme Court for action against land invasions

Faced with the threat of the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST) invading rural properties in the country in “Red April” and the invasions already carried out by the National Front of Struggle Countryside and City (FNL), the Brazilian Confederation of Agriculture and Livestock (CNA) asked the Federal Supreme Court (STF) on Wednesday 12.

The entity wants the STF to determine, in an injunction, measures to prevent new land invasions.

Distributed to Justice Nunes Marques, CNA’s petition makes 11 requests, including a determination that movements such as the MST, FNL, and others immediately suspend any plan to invade rural areas; the suspension of the social networks of these groups; and an order for the federal and state governments to act preventively to avoid invasions.

“The greatest threat faced by rural producers in their productive activity today is the action of organized groups that, for ideological and political reasons, plan and promote land invasions – generally of productive properties – to generate chaos and terror in the countryside, discrediting the institutions of land and property protection,” says CNA, in the request.

See the 11 requests made to the STF:

• Determination to the MST, the FNL, and other organized groups of the immediate suspension of any plan for land invasions;
• Expedition of an official letter to the companies that operate social networks (such as Telegram, WhatsApp, Twitter, Youtube, Instagram, and TikTok) to, within two hours, suspend channels, profiles, and accounts of the MST and the FNL and their leaders to prevent the dissemination of manifestations of incitement to the practice of the crime of land invasions;
• Determination of subpoena to the Ministry of Justice and the Federal Police Department to provide information about the criminal actions of these groups;
• Determination that the federal government create a monitoring group, with the participation of the states, state secretariats of public safety, and entities representing agriculture and cattle ranching, such as the CNA and its state federations, to monitor actions underway to prevent the invasion of rural properties;
• Determination, to the federal government, of the elaboration of a specific program to combat land invasions in Brazil and to prevent the planning of invasions and squatting by organized groups;
• Determination to the state governments that they present to the STF information about the movement and location of encampments and “marches” of the MST, the FNL, and other organized groups whose purpose is to invade land;
• Determination to the state governments of specific allocation of the police force to accompany the activities of these encampments and “marches” to prevent any initiative of land invasion;
• Determination to the civil and military police of the states to proceed with the immediate arrests of the participants of these groups that are caught in land invasions
  Determination to the State governors to identify individuals who are inciting or financing acts of invasion;
• Determination to the state governors to create specialized units for the prevention and combat of criminality in rural regions within the structures of the civil and military police;
• Determination to the governors to act immediately with the police forces for the reintegration of possession, regardless of individual judicial decision.

With information from Revista Oeste