Paraguayan Police Evict Peasants, Destroy Homes

Asuncion, Mar 26 (Prensa Latina) More than 200 Paraguayan police with backup helicopter support evicted dozens of peasant families who were occupying a farm in the department of Canindeyu, destroying their homes and crops. The action, which is the latest incident of its kind in the struggle of the landless peasants, took place while indigenous of the Sawhoyamaxa community in the department of Caaguazu, remain firmly seated in their ancestral lands, rejecting the sale made to private buyers. The eviction of the farmers was held at a place known as Sidepar and the large police deployment was accompanied by the prosecutor Jalil Rashid, the same involved in a similar action on June in Curuguaty, where 11 farmers and six policemen were killed. Rachid has been repeatedly challenged by defense lawyers for the peasants imprisoned as a result of that event, due to his close relationship with landowners of the area and is charged with hounding rural families. These incidents with peasants and indigenous peoples, coming almost more than twenty days before the April 21 elections, caused additional protests by progressive organizations and are an indication of the difficult problem of land tenancy in Paraguay. sc/sa/iff/jrr

Modificado el ( martes, 26 de marzo de 2013 )

Paraguay: Police attack peasants in eviction move, 17 dead

	Paraguayan president replaces officials after deadly clashes By the CNN Wire Staff, CNN.com June 16, 2012
	Police on Friday drag the body of one of the peasants shot dead during an eviction of squatters in Curuguaty. Asuncion, Paraguay (CNN) — Paraguay’s President on Saturday named a new interior minister and national police chief following clashes between police and peasants that left at least 17 dead. Former Interior Minister Carlos Filizzola and former police chief Paulino Rojas offered resignation letters after the incident, and President Fernando Lugo accepted them Friday. Peasants in eastern Paraguay opened fire Friday on police trying to evict them from private property, initiating the deadly confrontation, local authorities and state-run media said. The president named Ruben Candida Amarilla as the new interior minister, and Arnaldo Sanabria Moran as interim police commander. The violence occurred in Curuguaty, a remote community about 240 kilometers (150 miles) northeast of the Paraguayan capital of Asuncion near the Brazilian border. Paraguayan farmers take part in a protest on Wednesday. About 300 law enforcement officers arrived Friday morning to serve the order when some of the approximately 100 farmers who had been occupying the land illegally for more than a month began shooting at them, authorities said. Curuguaty Hospital director Gustavo Gonzalez told the state-run Paraguay Agency of Public Information that seven policemen and more than 10 farmers were killed. About 80 more police and civilians were wounded and were receiving medical treatment, Gonzalez added. Three of the police officers were flown to Asuncion for treatment, the official news agency said. Authorities did not detail the number of civilians killed, but they did confirm the deaths of seven police, including the chief and deputy chief of the national police’s special operations unit. Police said the peasants had been camping on land owned by Blas Riquelme, a businessman and politician active in the South American nation’s Colorado Party. But Jose Rodriguez, the leader of the “tent people” — so named because they live in tents, told Radio Nacional that the peasants were on public lands that Riquelme had acquired illegally.

Uruguay: Landless Peasants with 80 Families Occupy and Take Over Farm in Northern Uruguay

Written by MercoPress

Wednesday, 18 January 2012

The landless peasants’ movement has reached Uruguay: the self called “shaggy” ones, with eighty families, have taken over a 400 hectares farm in the extreme north of the country Artigas, and have been occupying the land since.

“We have been through seven years of Broad Front government and very few peasants or paid farm hands have had access to a plot of land”, said Jorge Rodas president of the Union of Sugar Workers from Artigas, (UTAA). The union was originally founded in the sixties by the Uruguayan urban guerrilla leader Raul Sendic and whose organization now as a political party belongs to the ruling catch-all Broad Front coalition which extends from the conservative Christian Democrats to Communists, Socialists, anarchists, Trotskyites and obviously the former guerrilla, whose current leader was elected in 2009 president of the country, Jose Mujica. The idea of the ‘shaggies”, very similar to the MST, landless movement in Brazil and who have introduced the 80 families, is to remain for some time to send “a strong message to the government and the people of Uruguay”. Rodas said that the organization keeps growing in number and is targeting farms minimally exploited or belonging to absentee landlords. “This is to tell government that if we have the strength to occupy private land, we will continue growing in the number of people who support us and are joining our movement”

Nepal: Land to the Peasants, or returned to the Landlords?

[Feudal landlords and reactionaries have always and everywhere claimed that revolutionary land reform–the seizure of lands for cultivation by landless peasants–is not an expropriation for liberation, but is a criminal theft by undeserving peasants.  It was shocking when the Maoist party in Nepal [(UCPN(M)] abandoned the People’s War and adopted a bourgeois-constitutional path–and then promised to return the peasant-liberated lands, in order to make peace with the landlords and capitalists.  Inevitably, struggle inside the Maoist party ensued, which continues, and which has led to the Party ordering its leadership (which has taken government positions) to reverse its capitulationist deal of returning liberated lands to the landlords.  Prime Minister Bhattarai and Party Chairman Dahal (Prachanda) are juggling the opposing goals of maintaining their influence in the Maoist party, while continuing to make unprincipled concessions to the bourgeois parties in the government.  Revolutionaries have forced the issue out of the smoke-filled back rooms and into the open for all to see–and continue to press the issue.  We shall see. — Frontlines ed.]

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landless squatters

by redstar

Kathmandu, January 26: The secretariat of the standing committee of the UCPN-Maoist urged the government, not to withdraw its decision to legalise land transactions carried out by Maoist-formed ‘people’s government ‘ during the period of people’s war.

In a meeting held at party Supremo Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’s newly residence at Lazimpat on Thursday, they advised the Maoist-led government not to annul January 12 decision.

Dr. Baburam Bhattarai’s Cabinet had decided that all the land and property transactions carried out by Maoist people’s council during the great people’s war, would be given legal status.

Because of the drastic decision of the government, opposition parties the Nepali Congress and the Communist party of Nepal United Marxist and Leninist has condemned it.

As they have been obstructing House since January 17 demanding that the government revoke its January 12 decision, the impending tasks in peace and statute have been severely affected.

Nepal: Revolutionary Maoists say, we will defend the landless peasants’ land reform

[The Revolutionary Maoists led by Vice Chairman Mohan Baidya are leading the fight against the “establishment ‘Maoists'” (Bhattarai and Dahal/’Prachanda’) who have reneged on their revolutionary oath to landless peasants and Dalits and agreed to return the lands which had been seized from vicious, abusive, and absent landlords during the People’s War and were redistributed to peasant farmers. — Frontlines ed.]

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Kathmandu Post:  “Maoist row over returning property”

Revolutionary Maoists burning 7-point Agreement to return lands seized by landless peasants

KATHMANDU, NOV 07 – The Maoist hardline faction led by Vice-chairman Mohan Baidya and party establishment camp are at odds over returning property seized or occupied by the party.

Return of property seized or occupied by the Maoists was one of the key points agreed to in the seven-point deal signed on November 1. The Baidya faction has, however, said it will resist every effort that is made to take away the land from the poor farmers and the landless.

A day after UCPN (Maoist) Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal issued a circular to the party’s lower organisations directing cadres to assist in the process of returning seized property, a gathering of the Baidya camp in the Capital on Sunday directed its activists to thwart the ‘takeover’.

“We will retaliate if anyone tries to take over the land from the farmers,” said Maheshwor Dahal, the Maoist central committee member of the Baidya faction.