Message About Death Threat Against Joao Pedro Stedile

An announcement has been circulated on social media that says ?Stedile,
dead or alive? and offers a reward of R$10 thousand

Message to the Brazilian people

[Port. http://www.mst.org.br/2015/03/12/nota-sobre-a-ameaca-de-morte-a-stedile.html]

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

/From the MST web site /