Message About Death Threat Against João Pedro Stédile

Wednesday, March 11, 2015

Message to the Brazilian peopleStedile Wanted Poster

A “Stedile, dead or alive” ad has been circulated on social media. Presenting him as leader of the MST and "enemy of the Fatherland", the author offers a reward of R$10,000 for those who can fulfill this request. In other words, the ad is encouraging and promising to pay to kill a person, in this case João Pedro Stedile of the national coordination of the MST.

There are indications that this criminal action originated from the personal Facebook account of Paulo Mendonça, a municipal guard from Macaé (RJ). And it was immediately reproduced by most of the social networks that on a daily basis spew hatred of the people's movements, migrants, the Workers Party and now, especially against President Dilma Rousseff. They are the same social networks for the most part who are organizing for protests on March 15 to demand that Dilma,  legitimately elected in 2014, step down from the office of President of the Republic.

The authorities have been contacted so that the author of the ad and all those who are posting it can be investigated and brought to justice, since they are guilty of incitement to murder.

But the posting is only a reflection of the sectors of the Brazilian elite who are willing to promote a wave of violence and hatred in order to destabilize the government and take back the power that they lost with the PT's electoral victory in 2002.

For these sectors there are no limits, not even common sense. They refuse to accept the will of the people expressed in the democratic process for electing their rulers.

They get carried away by coup instincts, lulled by the support and connivance of the conservative and anti-democratic media. They use the rhetoric of fighting corruption and the need to remove those who they believe are destroying the country, to flirt with democratic rupture.  They pose as democrats, forgetting that the governments of the military dictatorship also claimed to be democratic.

They are the same ones who committed with impunity the crime against the homeland with the privatization policy of the 1990s.

The poster, and what we see on the streets and social networks, is a consequence mainly of a partisan media, which manipulates, distorts and hides information at the same time promoting hatred and prejudice against those who think differently. The theologian Leonardo Boff is right when he blames the conservative, coup-hungry media, which never respected a popular government but wants to heighten the drama of the political crisis in the country. And courageously names the promoters of the chaos in which they want to throw the country: the newspaper O Globo, TV Globo, Folha de S. Paulo, the Estado de S.Paulo and the perverse and lying Veja magazine.

A media power that has the ability to hijack political parties and sectors of the powers in the republic.

This media, without any ethics or social responsibility, shapes its readers with the mentality of the author who made the criminal poster about Stedile. And it's this media that feeds the social networks  with the most anti-social and uncivilized values.

The PSDB Party, betraying their social democratic origin, are opposing the government, feeding a collective hatred that was initially restricted to the upper class, but now sprawling throughout all segments of society, against a political party and the elected president. They imagine that they will benefit from the chaos and install their own party.

A monster was created by the way the PSDB chose to oppose the Workers Party government and by the irresponsibility of the business media. Violence and hatred are spreading in the streets. This creature has picked its first victims: gay couples and their children, immigrants, the poor of the suburbs, grassroots leaders and political activists of the left. But often those creatures, who are always hungry for violence and intolerance, do not even spare their creators and those who are accompanying them today.

There will be a long journey to overcome the difficulties created by those who oppose building a country that is socially just, democratic and egalitarian.

Starting with a deep political reform that takes us to a new National Constituent Assembly, exclusive and binding. It is necessary to tax large fortunes and face the power of the financiers and the financial system. Battles so urgently needed in order to face the challenge of democratizing communication to  ensure equally the freedom of expression and the right to information, rights blocked by the monopoly media that exists in the country.

Only then, those who are nostalgic for the dictatorships will be defeated, and the people will be conscious of the need to defend the country' and struggle for democracy, and not the opposite, as the author of the criminal poster believes today.

Landless Workers Movement– MST
São Paulo, March 12, 2015