MST's CPI is an attack on Brazilian democracy, say jurists

Association Jurists for Democracy publishes solidarity note after CPI approval against the movement

The Association of Jurists for Democracy (AJD) released this Tuesday (May 2) a note of solidarity with the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST) and its leaders on account of the approval by the Chamber of Deputies of the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry to investigate movement.

According to the entity, the CPI has "doubtful constitutionality", as it was instituted "without a determined fact and with the undue purpose of 'investigating' a legal entity governed by private law". The initiative "is another step in the process carried out by the neoliberal right of persecution, discredit and demonization of social movements", says the note.

The AJD also believes that the CPI takes place "as a stage for political disputes on issues such as the struggle for land and territory and the strategy of criminalizing the leaders of the movements that organize rural workers, considered enemies".

Jurists point out that the CPI is being installed at a time when conflicts in the countryside are erupting. "The reading of the MST's CPI request takes place when the most recent CPT (Pastoral Land Commission) Notebook of Conflicts records 2,018 occurrences of conflict in the countryside, which involved 909,450 people and the frightening number of 47 murders in the year 2022", says the document.

CPI approval

The MST's CPI was confirmed on April 26, in a night session of the Chamber of Deputies, on the same day that a joint session of the National Congress read the request that created the Joint Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry (CPMI) on the 8th of January. The Commission's stated aim is to investigate the "real purpose" of the movement, as well as its means of funding.

For João Pedro Stedile, a member of the national leadership of the MST, the CPI exists to divert the focus from illegalities committed by agribusiness. "What there should be is a CPI to investigate who deforested, who invades indigenous lands, who invades quilombola areas, who uses pesticides," he said last Saturday (29).

Ceres Hadich, also a member of the MST leadership, the Commission should not even have been instituted, due to the lack of a determined fact. "We receive it with the lucidity that it is a CPI without a fact, without a determined object, without a concrete fact so that it can be instituted and effectively for it to happen, but we understand that this is part of this dispute of narratives, this dispute for within the apparatus of the Brazilian State," he said.

Also this Saturday (April 26), the Minister of Agrarian Development and Family Agriculture, Paulo Teixeira, also stated that the Commission has no concrete facts to investigate, since the April occupations had already been undone. "The protest was made, the agenda was delivered, there is nothing to investigate. There is no irregularity, not least because we have no irregular agreement with the MST", he said.

Read the full note:

NOTE OF SOLIDARITY TO THE MST AND ITS LEADERSHIP

Once again, the ruralist and extreme right-wing caucuses of the National Congress move to install a Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry to "investigate" the Landless Workers Movement - MST.

The request points out the following facts to be investigated: "What is the true purpose of the MST? Who are the funders of this Movement? What is the current reality of all the properties that have already been invaded?

It is not the first time that the instrument of the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry has been used with the purpose of constraining and criminalizing the MST and its leaders. In other governments led by the PT, between 2003 and 2017, the CPIs of the Land, of the MST, Funai-Incra and Funai-Incra 2 were installed, as well as recognition of the territories of traditional communities.

The creation of the CPI as a stage for political disputes on issues such as the struggle for land and territory and the strategy of criminalizing the leaders of movements that organize rural workers, seen as enemies, is nothing new.

Such initiatives eloquently materialize the heart of the class struggle that takes place in the Brazilian countryside, still excessively concentrated, both from the land, social and economic point of view. Excessive land concentration, the instrumentalization of a hate speech by the organized rural worker produced by the extreme right, the cult of an alleged "armed" defense of property and the complete and purposeful forgetting of its social function constitute the background for the institution of plus this CPI.

The reading of the MST's CPI request occurs when the most recent CPT's Notebook of Conflicts registers 2,018 occurrences of conflict in the countryside, which involved 909,450 people and the frightening number of 47 murders in the year 2022. The advancement of a conception of "agribusiness " that naturalizes violence, land concentration, environmental racism, the exploitation of slave labor, the degradation of environmental and collective spaces, does not seek to attack, only, the initiatives of organization of rural workers. Ultimately, the installation of the MST's CPI constitutes an attack on Brazilian democracy.

In this scenario, the choice of a CPI of dubious constitutionality - since it was instituted without a determined fact and with the undue purpose of "investigating" a legal entity governed by private law - as a field of political dispute is yet another step in the process carried out by the neoliberal right of persecution , discrediting and demonizing social movements, through the use of disinformation and fake news about actions that claim compliance by the constituted powers with public policies guaranteed by the Constitution.

AJD stands in solidarity with the MST and its leaders, reaffirming its importance as a legitimate social movement within the framework of democracy.