Installation of the CPI is another chapter in the offensive against MST

From MST

The Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST), through this note, denounces the installation of the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry (CPI) against the Movement, carried out this last Wednesday (05/17). The Commission is installed with no determined goal. It represents an attempt to criminalize the MST and put pressure on the government. Ricardo Salles, rapporteur, and Lieutenant Colonel Zucco, president, do not have the legitimacy to conduct any type of investigation against a Movement that is heading towards its 40th anniversary, raising the historic banner of combating the concentration of land in Brazil.

Wanting to criminalize our struggle through a CPI is a strategy to cover up the real ills of the Brazilian countryside: increasing deforestation, land grabbing, fires, violence in the countryside, use of labor analogous to slavery, destruction and contamination of natural assets by the use of pesticides. This year alone, 918 slave labor victims were rescued, a record in 15 years. These are the topics that should be investigated.

We support compliance with the Federal Constitution (which Bolsonarism tried to tear up on January 8) in its entirety, including with regard to the fulfillment of the social function of property. This principle meets productive, environmental and labor criteria and must be upheld. Therefore, legal certainty is achieved by complying with the Constitution. The Landless families in the encampments struggle with dignity for land, shelter and work, rights guaranteed in the Magna Carta.

Therefore, knowing that our fight is fair and that, in this CPI, we are not the criminals, we will participate in it to present the Agrarian Reform that Brazil needs. In this commission, we will count on the solidarity not only of brave and courageous parliamentarians, but also with the support of the whole of society. Together, we will overcome yet another attempt to criminalize our struggle. The CPI will pass, the MST struggle will continue! We will win!

National Directorate of the MST

Brasília, May 18, 2023