Topic: Peasant

Court Orders Protection for Colombian Indigenous Group
Constanza Vieira, Inter Press Service (IPS)
July 23, 2004 - The Colombian government is called to outline the steps it has taken to protect the Kankuamo indigenous people from mass killings by paramilitaries. A ruling came form the courts last week in repsonse to the cry for help coming from the remote Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountain chain in northern Colombia. The Colombian government has been ordered ''to protect the life and personal integrity'' of all members of the Kankuamo indigenous communities who have been facing increasin violence in the shadow of a dam project which has been encroaching on Kankuamo land for the last several years.

Backgrounder: Land Reform in Venezuela
Global Exchange
July 07, 2004 - This two page overview of Venezuelan land reform foucuses on the current policies of President Hugo Chavez and the renewed emphasis on rural development in the early part of the 21st century. A brief background and summary of land reform policy and rural development in Venezuela since 1492 is provided along with consideration of the current challenges that landless Venezuelan's face in an age of international economic pressures and agribusiness.

75,000 Venezuelan Peasants Win Land Titles
Argiris Malapanis with Olivia Nelson & Natalie Doucet, The Militant
July 06, 2004 - Big farmers tried to block implementation of agrarian reform law that has already benefitted tens of thousands of Venezuelan families.This report comments extensively on how the land reform is benefitting poor peasants in Venezuela.

Farmer is Face of Land Reform's Success at 16
Christine A. Gaylican, Inquirer News Service
June 23, 2004 - After sixteen years the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program ( better known as CARP ) has transformed thousands of tenant-farmers in the Philippines into small farmer-entrepreneurs. This article discusses the experiences of one farmer, Mang Pio, a direct beneficiary of the Asian Development Bank's training for farmers called the Agrarian Reform Communities Project (ARCP) which seeks to provide agrarian reform beneficiaries the right tools to manage their farm lands. . . . .Read More

Peasants of the World Need. . . .
Via Campesina
April 29, 2004 - Via Campesina is pressuring the United Nations Human Rights Commission to reconginze the rights and needs of peasants around the world. This list of 5 demands was presented at the 60th session meeting. We, the peasants are the producers of food that feed the peoples . . . .Read More

TAKE ACTION- Colombian Peasant Organization Members Detained
Colombia Solidarity Campaign
March 02, 2004 - Luz Perly Cordoba*, President of the Arauca Campesino Association (ACA), who had accompanied members of the Colombia Solidarity Campaign on a human rights mission to Arauca in February 2003, has been detained by state forces. The organization’s office has been raided by police, which led to further detentions. We call on all individuals and organizations to express their deep dismay and disgust at the continued persecution of the social movement in Arauca, and call on the Colombian state to release Luz Perly Cordoba from detention immediately.

International Day of Farmers' Struggle 17 April
Via Campesina
February 26, 2004 - During the Ministerial Conference in Cancun, peasants, indigenous, youth and other sectors of civil society organized against neo-liberal policies and the WTO. Together these groups were able to stop the WTO through strong actions in Cancun and other parts of the world. Through mobilization and organizing these groups convinced some governments to resist neo-liberal policies and to stop destructive international negotiations that provoke disintegration, increase poverty and bring misery to rural areas. During the World Social Forum and the International Peasant Forum held in Mumbai, India, in January of this year strategies and plans of action were drafted with social movements in resistence and struggle against neo-liberal policies. The International Day of Peasant Struggle is an important part of this common agenda, and we call everybody, worldwide, to action on this day.

Violence Against Colombian Peasant Organizations
Via Campesina & FIAN
January 13, 2004 - Colombian peasants’ movements and organisations are suffering an escalation of violence inflicted by the state and paramilitary forces that has resulted in killings, detentions and displacement of peasants, blacks and indigenous people. This wave of violence is a result of the call for a “secure and democratic policy” by the Álvaro Uribe Vélez government. The government has promoted massive detentions of peasants. In this process of punishing and condemning, the state is violating the rights of the leaders of peasants, blacks and indigenous people. The Colombian authorities carry out campaigns to discredit and criminalise peasant organisations by associating them with subversion, in order to legitimise their brutal repression.

To Fight for the Land and to Learn from the Struggle
Thierry Deronne, Translated by Greg Wilpert and Nathan Converse
October 16, 2003 - A Press Conference was held prior to the International Conference of Resistance and Solidarity of the indigenous peoples and peasants in Caracas on August 30, 2003. The transcript includes interviews with some confernce participants prior to the conference, which was held October 11-14, 2003 in Venezuela.

TAKE ACTION- Murder and Arrest of Honduran Peasant Activists
Victoria Cervantes, uk.indymedia.org
July 29, 2003 - The National Center for Rural Workers (CNTC) in Honduras, Central America asks for urgent support for their communities after 2 activists are murdered and 30 detained in two separate attacks July 16 and July 17th.

Peasants Assassinated in Honduras
COCOCH (Honduan Coordinating Council of Peasant Organizations)
July 21, 2003 - After more than 18 years struggling for a piece of land, a number of farmers and peasant activitst were killed when working in their community by group of hitmen under command of the Honduran landowner Jos Len Argueta. Together COCOCH and CNTC condemn these acts of violence and call on the Honduran government and Human Rights Councils to take action.

Communique on the Current Revision of the World Bank's Land Policies
Global Campaign for Agrarian Reform
April 15, 2003 - To pay tribute to 19 landless rural workers who were killed by the Military Police on April 17th 1996 in Eldorado dos Carajás/Brazil, La Via Campesina declared this day International Day of Peasant Struggles. As part of the world wide activities for this day, the Global Campaign for Agrarian Reform makes public its statement on the land policy review process that the World Bank is currently conducting.

The Right of Peasants to Produce Food is in Danger
Via Campesina
April 09, 2003 - Millions of peasants have been evicted from their farming land. The development of huge plantations for cash crops aimed at exportation and industries, and the rapid increase of other land use forms such as the construction of hotels, golf courses and supermarkets haven taken away the land from the peasant often in the name of national development.