The life and brutal death of Sister Dorothy, a rainforest martyr

Andrew Buncombe
The Independent

15 February 2005


Sister Dorothy Stang lived among those who wanted her dead. When they finally came for her she read passages from the Bible to her killers. They listened for a moment, then fired. Her body was found face down in the mud, blood staining the back of her white blouse.

The town of Anapu, on the edge of the Amazon rainforest, is most notable for the dust that clogs its streets and for the number of shops selling chain-saws. It is also the place that Sister Dorothy called home for more than 30 years and where she organised her efforts to try to protect the rainforest and its people from disastrous and often illegal exploitation by logging firms and ranchers. Now Anapu will be known as the place where Sister Dorothy is buried.

The 74-year-old activist was laid to rest yesterday morning after being assassinated by two gunmen on Saturday at a remote encampment in the jungle about 30 miles from the town. Sister Dorothy - the most prominent activist to be murdered in the Amazon since Chico Mendez in 1988 - was shot six times in the head, throat and body at close range. "She was on a list of people marked for death. And little by little they're ticking those names off the list," said Nilde Sousa, an official with a local women's group who worked with the nun.

As with the death of Mr Mendez, a rubber tapper, the murder of Sister Dorothy has triggered waves of outrage among environmental and human rights activists who say she dedicated her life to helping the area's poor, landless peasants and confronting the businesses that see the rainforest only as a resource to be plundered and which have already destroyed 20 per cent of its 1.6 million square miles.

more:

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=611216

Words fail!

I hate this fucking planet..

what kind of 'human being' shoots a 74 year old woman 6 times. :mad:

and smuggle drugs and cozy up to the oil exploiters:(

coming from beef from South America, where rain forest is burned "clear" so that cattle can forage on it. The soil is so thin, that after 2 or 3 years of being close grazed, nothing grows on it for the cattle to eat, so yet more of the rain forest is destroyed to allow short term cattle raising.

be if were not for people like Sister Dorothy?

May she rest in peace O8)