US nun gunned down in Brazil's Amazon
BELEM, Brazil -- A 74-year-old American nun was shot and killed early yesterday in Brazil's
Two gunmen approached US missionary Dorothy Stang and shot her three times in the back at a settlement of landless peasants, 30 miles from the town of Anapu in the state of Para, police and fellow missionaries said.
''She had no fear; this was her life, her fight," Ze Geraldo, a federal deputy in the Workers Party, said by phone after helping to bring Stang's body to Anapu, where he said she would be buried. Having shot her in the back, a gunman fired a fourth shot to her head when she fell to the ground, then fled, he said. ''This is the savagery of the big landowners," added Geraldo, who has worked in the region for 20 years.
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva dispatched ministers and police teams to perform a ''rigorous" investigation.
''Two hired gunmen have now been identified, and there are other people involved," Human Rights Minister Nilmario Miranda said on national television. He used the word ''pistoleiro," used in Brazil to describe a contract killer.
Sister Dorothy, as she was known, was originally from Ohio. She worked with peasant families to prevent them from fleeing illegal loggers and ranchers in the Trans-Amazonian highway region, about 435 miles southwest of Belem, the state capital.
She negotiated with hired gunmen to prevent attacks on settlements, frequently reported human rights abuses, and taught residents how to use forest resources in a sustainable way.
''She received so many threats," said Sister Betsy Flynn of Stang's order, the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur.
Brazil's government compared Stang's killing to that of Amazon environmental activist Chico Mendes, who was gunned down in 1988 and became a martyr in the fight to protect the world's largest rain forest and its people.
Environment Minister Marina Silva said Stang's death would intensify work to create so-called extractavist settlements to allow sustainable use of forest resources by small farmers.
Small farmers clear the jungle to expand fields. They clash with big landowners seeking to take over areas of forest for illegal logging or ranching.
