NGO workers in Brazil receive death threats.

Claudio Julio Tognolli_247 - Amnesty International, the world's largest human rights organization, launched a worldwide campaign from London on Monday in defense of Diogo Cabral and Inaldo Serejo, the state coordinator of the Pastoral Land Commission (CPT) in Maranhão. Both were threatened on the afternoon of July 25th while attending a hearing related to a land dispute between local farmers and the Quilombola community of Salgado. The dispute involves a plot of land in the municipality of Pirapemas, located 133 km from São Luís, in Maranhão. Although the community's right to remain on the land was legally recognized in October 2010, the farmers managed to obtain a court order for eviction, which was only suspended after the intervention of Diogo Cabral and Inaldo Serejo.

According to Amnesty International, Diogo Cabral states that a local farmer confronted the pair as they arrived at the forum, saying that outsiders brought problems to the village and that, due to the support given to the quilombola community, "we have to set fire to them from time to time, just like they did to Sister Dorothy."

The threat against lawyer Diogo Cabral and Father Inaldo Serejo, Amnesty International continues, follows a series of threats against quilombola communities in the region and CPT (Pastoral Land Commission) employees who represent them. In May 2010, the CPT received a phone call saying that the food in the quilombola communities would be poisoned. On June 13, 2011, the CPT headquarters in São Luís was broken into and documents ransacked. Two days later, another CPT office, in Pinheiro, near São Luís, was broken into, and documents and a computer were stolen. Residents of the quilombola community of Salgado complained of a campaign of harassment and intimidation orchestrated by local farmers, who have been destroying crops, killing livestock, fencing off water sources, and threatening community leaders with death.

Quilombola communities are Afro-Brazilian settlements first established in the late 16th century in remote rural areas of Brazil by escaped and freed slaves who resisted slavery. The 1988 Brazilian Constitution (articles 215, 216 and ADCT 68) recognizes the right of descendant communities to lands historically occupied by quilombos, stating that "the remaining members of quilombo communities who are occupying their lands are recognized as having definitive ownership, and the State must issue them the respective titles."

A series of federal and state laws issued to regulate how quilombola lands are identified and how titles are granted to remaining communities culminated, in 2009, in Normative Instruction No. 57/2009 of the National Institute for Colonization and Agrarian Reform (INCRA). It establishes the different administrative steps – identification, recognition, delimitation, demarcation, removal of illegal occupants, titling and land registration – necessary for quilombola communities to obtain title to their lands.

In addition to national legislation, Brazil also adheres to the 169 International Labour Organization Convention, the American Convention on Human Rights, and the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, which reaffirm the rights of Afro-descendant groups to cultural and property rights, as well as the principles of non-discrimination and equality before the law.

There are over three thousand quilombola communities in Brazil. Hundreds of administrative processes have been initiated before INCRA, but so far less than 10 percent of the communities have received their land titles. This process has generated conflicts in many parts of Brazil, with local farmers using violence and intimidation against communities fighting for their land rights. In some parts of the state of Maranhão, these conflicts date back to the 1980s, but have intensified as Afro-descendant communities have gained greater legal protection to secure their rights and have their claims met. Thirty quilombola leaders in the region have received death threats.