The Military Police (PM) of Paraná served two arrest warrants and carried out a search and seizure operation in a settlement of the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST) in Guarapuava (PR) this Friday (20).
The state police also sent ten people to the police station and seized weapons, the agency reported.
The 3rd Criminal Court of Guarapuava issued the operation, which had the support of the Military Fire Department and the Civil Police, and two arrest warrants, in response to the protests this Thursday.
MST protesters closed kilometer 390 of the PR-170 highway and attacked and threatened three police officers. The protest began on Wednesday (18).
The police found a shotgun with a man. In another man’s vehicle there was a 9mm caliber pistol, with 20 rounds of ammunition intact. A third individual kept another pistol with ten rounds of ammunition in the magazine, and a fourth had nine rounds of .38 caliber ammunition in the car.
Another six people were identified as being involved in the attacks on police officers and are being interviewed by the police chief presiding over the investigation.
Members of the movement ignored a prohibitory injunction to close the highway issued by the 1st Public Finance Court of Guarapuava. The MST held a protest to express dissatisfaction with the National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform (Incra), demanding the regularization of the settled area.
Around 300 people from 14 camps are taking part in the protests. The communities are located in the municipalities of Inácio Martins, Pinhão, Reserva do Iguaçu and Guarapuava, all in Paraná, on 75 thousand hectares of land grabbed by large landowners, according to the MST itself.
“Our objective is to call Incra to come to the negotiation. We didn’t get a response from him, we came to occupy BR”, said a member. The road was reopened on Thursday (19).
According to the MST, throughout the protests on Wednesday and Thursday, the road was opened every 30 minutes. A meeting was scheduled for this Friday afternoon (20), in Guarapuava, with representatives from the National Agrarian Ombudsman’s Office, the state Agrarian Ombudsman’s Office and the Judicial Center for Conflict Resolution (Cejusc) of the Court of Justice of Paraná.
The president of the now closed Parliamentary Inquiry Commission (CPI) of the MST, Lieutenant-Colonel Zucco (Republicanos-RS), protested. “I warned that the MST would return with strength after the end of the CPI. But what happened in Paraná is very serious,” he said.
Other side
The MST stated in a statement that there was a “violent attack by an operation involving around 100 military police officers in the Nova Geração settlement”.
“Eleven peasants were taken to the city police station, despite there being formally only two arrest, search and seizure warrants,” the movement alleged.
Still according to the text, approximately 100 people were housed there since the 18th.
The MST also stated that the operation was “excessive in nature”, as, as they highlighted, an agreement had already been reached in the early afternoon of Thursday (19) for the negotiation meeting this Friday (20).
*published by Tiago Tortella, from CNN
*with information from Agência Estado
Source: CNN Brasil

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