By Sovereign Hager
Impunity Watch Reporter, South America

PARA, Brazil-A court convicted two ranchers for ordering the murder of a U.S. nun and environmental activist, Dorothy Stang in 2005. Prosecutors argued that the two men hired gunmen to kill the seventy-three year old nun because she blocked them from seizing land that the government had given to Amazonian farmers. Both men were sentenced to thirty years in prison.

Dorothy Stang had been working in the Amazon for thirty years to preserve the rainforest and protect the rights of rural workers against large-scale farmers. She was shot and left to die on the side of a muddy rainforest road where loggers and ranchers have deforested large sections of the rainforest.

Human rights groups protested a delay in the prosecution, which was widely viewed as a test of Brazil’s ability to combat impunity in the Amazon region. A court acquitted Vitalmiro Moura in 2008, an event President Lula de Silva called a “stain” on Brazil’s international image. The recent conviction is the result of a retrail. Judge Raimundo Moises Alvez Flexa told the AP that the conviction “sent a clear message that the law will be applied to everyone regardless of socioeconomic status.”

However, both the judge and Greenpeace have stated that more convictions for these types of crimes are necessary in order for activists to truly be protected.  The Pastoral Land Commission estimates that in the past ten years up to 2008, three hundred and sixty-five people were killed  over similar land disputes. Only around eighty gunmen have actually gone to jail for these murders.

Rebeca Spires, a nun who knew Dorothy Stang called the convictions a milestone victory given the “endless supply” of gunmen. Spires told the AP that “the verdict sends a strong message to other masterminds that the impunity is ending.”

For More information, please see:

AP-Brazil: Last Rancher on Trial for U.S. Nun’s Murder-1 May 2010

BBC-Second Brazil Rancher Jailed Over U.S. Nun’s Murder-1 May 2010

Washington Post-Second Brazil Rancher Sentenced in U.S. Nun Murder-1 May 2010