Brazil Tops Activist Killings List Amid Commodities Price Slump

  • Global Witness reports record year of deaths from land defense
  • Mining-related deaths jump 70 percent, group says in report

Antonio Isidio Pereira.

Source: Global Witness
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When Father Josef Wasensteiner received a call on Christmas Eve to tell him that a friend and active forest defender had turned up dead, the Catholic priest was devastated, but not surprised.

“This community is one in conflict,” said German-born Wasensteiner, who immigrated more than 30 years ago to the edge of Brazil’s Amazon in Codo, Maranhao state.