Brazil’s green activists risk death

Hundreds of Brazil's environmental campaigners face the threat of assassination, the Guardian reported a new study as saying. The report, by the Catholic Land Commission (CPT), comes two decades after the murder of Chico Mendes, a prominent defender of the country's rain forests.
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The study says that at least 260 people’s lives are at risk because of their fight to defend the rain forests.

 

Chico Mendes was the leader of the Brazilian rubber tappers’ union. He was killed after his union successfully defended a piece of virgin rain forest from ranchers. The murder sparked an international furore.

 

In February this year, Francisco da Silva, a 51-year-old leader of the landless movement, was killed by a single bullet to the head. He had been named in a previous CPT report about rural leaders receiving death threats.

 

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